'       .ITY  OF 
.LIFORNIA 

1TA  CRUZ 


FAT 


MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS 


BY 

W.    D.    HOWELLS 

AUTHOR  OF 

A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA  "   "  THE  COAST  OF  BOHEMIA  " 
"A   HAZARD   OF   NEW    FORTUNES"    ETC. 


NEW    YORK 

HARPER    &    BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 
1895 


W.    D.   IIOWELLS'S    WORKS. 

/.V  CLOTH  BINDING. 


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PUULISUKD   BY   HARPER   &   BROTHERS,  NKW   YOBK. 

OT  Fur  sale  by  all  booksellers,  or  will  be  sent  by  mail,  postage  prepaid,  to  any 
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Copyright,  1895,  by  WILLIAM  D.  HOWKLUJ. 
All  rights  reserved. 


Electrotjped  bj  J.  A.  HO 


&  Co.,  Jefferson,  0. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAP.  PAGE 

I.   THE  BOOKCASE  AT  HOME       ....  l 

II.    GOLDSMITH          10 

III.  CERVANTES 20 

IV.  IRVING           28 

V.    FIRST  FICTION  AND  DRAMA          ...  34 

VI.    LONGFELLOW'S  SPANISH  STUDENT          .       .  33 

VII.   SCOTT 40 

VIII.    LIGHTER  FANCIES         44 

IX.    POPE          48 

X.    VARIOUS  PREFERENCES 60 

XI.    UNCLE  TOM'S  CABIN         65 

XII.    OSSIAN 66 

XIII.  SHAKESPEARE 69 

XIV.  IK  MARVEL 82 

XV.    DICKENS 88 

XVI.    WORDSWORTH,  LOWELL,  CHAUCER      .       .  104 

XVII.    MACAULAY           114 

XVIII.    CRITICS  AND  REVIEWS 119 

XIX.     A  NON-LITERARY  EPISODE             ....  124 

XX.    THACKERAY 129 

XXI.    LAZARILLO  DE  TORMES 139 

XXII.    CURTIS,  LONGFELLOW,  SCHLEGEL       .       .  145 

XXIII.  TENNYSON           150 

XXIV.  HEINE 165 

XXV.    DE  QUINCEY,  GOETHE,  LONGFELLOW        ".  175 


IV  CONTENTS. 

CHAP.       •  PAGE 

XXVI.  GEORGE  ELIOT,  HAWTHORNE,  GOETHE,  HEINE,  183 

XXVII.  CHARLES  READE 191 

XXVIII.  DANTE 198 

XXIX.  GOLDQNI,  MANZONI,  D' AZEGLIO 206 

XXX.  PASTOR  FIDO,  AMINTA,  ROMOLA,  YEAST,  PAUL 

FERROLL 216 

XXXI.  DE    FOREST,    JAMES,    ERCKMANN  -  CUATRIAN, 

BJORNSON 222 

XXXII.    TOURGUENIEF,  AUERBACH 229 

XXXIII.  CERTAIN  PREFERENCES  AND  EXPERIENCES.      .  234 

XXXIV.  VALERA,  VALDES,  GALDOS,  VERGA,  ZOLA,  TROL- 

LOPE,  HARDY 243 

XXXV.  TOLSTOY.                                                            .  250 


MY  LITERARY    PASSIONS. 


THE    BOOKCASE    AT    HOME. 

To  give  an  account  of  one's  reading  is  in  some  sort 
to  give  an  account  of  one's  life ;  and  I  hope  that  I 
shall  not  offend  those  who  follow  me  in  these  papers, 
if  I  cannot  help  speaking  of  myself  in  speaking  of 
the  authors  I  must  call  my  masters :  my  masters  not 
because  they  taught  me  this  or  that  directly,  but  be- 
cause I  had  such  delight  in  them  that  I  could  not 
fail  to  teach  myself  from  them  whatever  I  was  capa- 
ble of  learning.  I  do  not  know  whether  I  have  been 
what  people  call  a  great  reader ;  I  cannot  claim  even 
to  have  been  a  very  wise  reader ;  but  I  have  always 
been  conscious  of  a  high  purpose  to  read  much  more, 
and  more  discreetly,  than  I  have  ever  really  done,  and 
probably  it  is  from  the  vantage-ground  of  this  good 
intention  that  I  shall  sometimes  be  found  writing  here 
rather  than  from  the  facts  of  the  case. 
A 


2  MY   LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

But  I  am  pretty  sure  that  I  began  right,  and  that  if 
I  had  always  kept  the  lofty  level  which  I  struck  at  the 
outset  I  should  have  the  right  to  use  authority  in 
these  reminiscences  without  a  bad  conscience.  I  shall 
try  not  to  use  authority,  however,  and  I  do  not  expect 
to  speak  here  of  all  my  reading,  whether  it  has  been 
much  or  little,  but  only  of  those  books,  or  of  those 
authors  that  I  have  felt  a  genuine  passion  for.  I 
have  known  such  passions  at  every  period  of  my  life, 
but  it  is  mainly  of  the  loves  of  my  youth  that  I  shall 
write,  and  I  shall  write  all  the  more  frankly  because 
my  own  youth  now  seems  to  me  rather  more  alien 
than  that  of  any  other  person. 

I  think  that  I  came  of  a  reading  race,  which  has 
always  loved  literature  in  a  way,  and  in  spite  of  vary- 
ing fortunes  and  many  changes.  From  a  letter  of  my 
great-grandmother's  written  to  a  stubborn  daughter 
upon  some  unfilial  behavior,  like  running  away  to  be 
married,  I  suspect  that  she  was  fond  of  the  high-col- 
ored fiction  of  her  day,  for  she  tells  the  willful  child 
that  she  has  "  planted  a  dagger  in  her  mother's  heart," 
and  I  should  not  be  surprised  if  it  were  from  this 
fine-languaged  lady  that  my  grandfather  derived  his 
taste  for  poetry,  rather  than  from  his  father,  who 
was  of  a  worldly-wiser  mind.  To  be  sure,  he  became 


THE    BOOKCASE    AT    HOME.  3 

a  Friend  by  Convincement,  as  the  Quakers  say,  and  so 
I  cannot  imagine  that  he  was  altogether  worldly ;  but 
he  had  an  eye  to  the  main  chance :  he  founded  the  in- 
dustry of  making  flannels  in  the  little  Welsh  town 
where  he  lived,  and  he  seems  to  have  grown  richer, 
for  his  day  and  place,  than  any  of  us  have  since  grown 
for  ours.  My  grandfather,  indeed,  was  concerned 
chiefly  in  getting  away  from  the  world  and  its  wicked- 
ness. He  came  to  this  country  early  in  the  century 
and  settled  his  family  in  a  log-cabin  in  the  Ohio 
woods,  that  they  might  be  safe  from  the  sinister  in- 
fluences of  the  village  where  he  was  managing  some 
woolen  mills.  But  he  kept  his  affection  for  certain 
poets  of  the  graver,  not  to  say  gloomier  sort,  and  he 
must  have  suffered  his  children  to  read  them,  pending 
that  great  question  of  their  souls'  salvation  which  was 
a  lifelong  trouble  to  him. 

My  father,  at  any  rate,  had  such  a  decided  bent  in 
the  direction  of  literature,  that  he  was  not  content  in 
any  of  his  several  economical  experiments  till  he  be- 
came the  editor  of  a  newspaper,  which  was  then  the 
sole  means  of  satisfying  a  literary  passion.  His  pa- 
per, at  the  date  when  I  began  to  know  him,  was  a 
living,  comfortable  and  decent,  but  without  the  least 
promise  of  wealth  in  it,  or  the  hope  even  of  a  much 


4  MY   LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

better  condition.  I  think  now  that  he  was  wise  not 
to  care  for  the  advancement  which  most  of  us  have 
our  hearts  set  upon,  and  that  it  was  one  of  his  finest 
qualities  that  he  was  content  with  a  lot  in  life  where 
he  was  not  exempt  from  work  with  his  hands,  and  yet 
where  he  was  not  so  pressed  by  need  but  he  could 
give  himself  at  will  not  only  to  the  things  of  the  spir- 
it, but  the  things  of  the  mind  too.  After  a  season  of 
skepticism  he  had  become  a  religious  man,  like  the 
rest  of  his  race,  but  in  his  own  fashion,  which  was 
not  at  all  the  fashion  of  my  grandfather :  a  Friend  who 
had  married  out  of  Meeting,  and  had  ended  a  perfer- 
vid  Methodist.  My  father,  who  could  never  get  him- 
self converted  at  any  of  the  camp-meetings  where  my 
grandfather  often  led  the  forces  of  prayer  to  his  sup- 
port, and  had  at  last  to  be  given  up  in  despair,  fell  in 
with  the  writings  of  Emanuel  Swedenborg,  and  em- 
braced the  doctrine  of  that  philosopher  with  a  content 
that  has  lasted  him  all  the  days  of  his  many  years. 
Ever  since  I  can  remember,  the  works  of  Swedenborg 
formed  a  large  part  of  his  library ;  he  read  them  much 
himself,  and  much  to  my  mother,  and  occasionally  a 
"  Memorable  Relation  "  from  them  to  us  children. 
But  he  did  not  force  them  upon  our  notice,  nor  urge 
us  to  read  them,  and  I  think  this  was  very  well.  I 


THE   BOOKCASE    AT    HOME.  5 

suppose  his  conscience  and  his  reason  kept  him  from 
doing  so.  But  in  regard  to  other  books,  his  fondness 
was  too  much  for  him,  and  when  I  began  to  show  a 
liking  for  literature  he  was  eager  to  guide  my  choice. 
His  own  choice  was  for  poetry,  and  the  most  of 
our  library,  which  was  not  given  to  theology,  was 
given  to  poetry.  I  call  it  the  library  now,  but  then 
we  called  it  the  bookcase,  and  that  was  what  literally 
it  was,  though  I  believe  that  whatever  we  had  called 
our  modest  collection  of  books,  it  was  a  larger  private 
collection  than  any  other  in  the  town  where  we  lived. 
Still  it  was  all  held,  and  shut  with  glass  doors,  in  a 
case  of  very  few  shelves.  It  was  not  considerably  en- 
larged during  my  childhood,  for  few  books  came  to 
my  father  as  editor,  and  he  indulged  himself  in  buy- 
ing them  even  more  rarely.  My  grandfather's  book- 
store (it  was  also  the  village  drug-store)  had  then  the 
only  stock  of  literature  for  sale  in  the  place  ;  and  once, 
when  Harper  &  Brothers'  agent  came  to  replenish  it, 
he  gave  my  father  several  volumes  for  review.  One 
of  these  was  a  copy  of  Thomson's  Seasons,  a  finely- 
illustrated  edition,  whose  pictures  I  knew  long  be- 
fore I  knew  the  poetry,  and  thought  them  the  most 
beautiful  things  that  ever  were.  My  father  read  pas- 
sages of  the  book  aloud,  and  he  wanted  me  to  read  it 


6  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

all  myself.  For  the  matter  of  that  he  wanted  me  to 
read  Cowper,  from  whom  no  one  could  get  anything 
but  good,  and  he  wanted  me  to  read  Byron,  from 
whom  I  could  then  have  got  no  harm ;  we  get  harm 
from  the  evil  we  understand.  He  loved  Burns,  too, 
and  he  used  to  read  aloud  from  him,  I  must  own,  to 
my  inexpressible  weariness.  I  could  not  away  with 
that  dialect,  and  I  could  not  then  feel  the  charm  of 
the  poet's  wit,  nor  the  tender  beauty  of  his  pathos. 
Moore,  I  could  manage  better;  and  when  my  father 
read  Lalla  Rookh  to  my  mother  I  sat  up  to  listen,  and 
entered  into  all  the  woes  of  Iran  in  the  story  of  the 
Fire  Worshippers.  I  drew  the  line  at  the  Veiled 
Prophet  of  Khorassan,  though  I  had  some  sense  of  the 
humor  of  the  poet's  conception  of  the  critic  in  Fadla- 
deen.  But  I  liked  Scott's  poems  far  better,  and  got 
from  Ispahan  to  Edinburgh  with  a  glad  alacrity  of 
fancy.  I  followed  the  Lady  of  the  Lake  throughout, 
and  when  I  first  began  to  contrive  verses  of  my  own  I 
found  that  poem  a  fit  model  in  mood  and  metre. 

Among  other  volumes  of  verse  on  the  top  shelf  of  the 
bookcase,  of  which  I  used  to  look  at  the  outside  with- 
out penetrating  deeply  within,  were  Pope's  translation 
of  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  and  Dryden's  Virgil, 
pretty  little  tomes  in  tree-calf,  published  by  James 


THE    BOOKCASE    AT    HOME.  7 

Crissy  in  Philadelphia,  and  illustrated  with  small  cop- 
per-plates, which  somehow  seemed  to  put  the  matter 
hopelessly  beyond  me.  It  was  as  if  they  said  to  me 
in  so  many 'words  that  literature  which  furnished  the 
subjects  of  such  pictures  I  could  not  hope  to  under- 
stand, and  need  not  try.  At  any  rate,  I  let  them  alone 
for  the  time,  and  I  did  not  meddle  with  a  volume  of 
Shakespeare,  in  green  cloth  and  cruelly  fine  print, 
which  overawed  me  in  like  manner  with  its  wood-cuts. 
I  cannot  say  just  why  I  conceived  that  there  was 
something  unhallowed  in  the  matter  of  the  book ;  per- 
haps this  was  a  tint  from  the  reputation  of  the  rather 
profligate  young  man  from  whom  my  father  had  it. 
If  he  were  not  profligate  I  ask  his  pardon.  I  have  not 
the  least  notion  who  he  was,  but  that  was  the  notion 
I  had  of  him,  whoever  he  was,  or  wherever  he  now  is. 
There  may  never  have  been  such  a  young  man  at  all ; 
the  impression  I  had  may  have  been  pure  invention 
of  my  own,  after  the  manner  of  children  who  do  not 
very  distinctly  know  their  dreams  from  their  expe- 
riences, and  live  in  the  world  where  both  project  the 
same  quality  of  shadow. 

There  were,  of  course,  other  books  in  the  bookcase, 
which  my  consciousness  made  no  account  of,  and  I 
speak  only  of  those  I  remember.  Fiction  there  was 


8  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

none  at  all  that  I  can  recall,  except  Poe's  Tales  of  the 
Grotesque  and  the  Arabesque  (I  long  afflicted  myself 
as  to  what  those  words  meant,  when  I  might  easily 
have  asked  and  found  out)  and  Bulwer's  Last  Days  of 
Pompeii,  all  in  the  same  kind  of  binding.  History  is 
known,  to  my  young  remembrance  of  that  library,  by 
a  History  of  the  United  States,  whose  dust  and  ashes 
I  hardily  made  my  way  through ;  and  by  a  Chronicle 
of  the  Conquest  of  Granada,  by  the  ever  dear  and 
precious  Fray  Antonio  Agapida,  whom  I  was  long  in 
making  out  to  be  one  and  the  same  as  Washington 
Irving. 

In  school  there  was  as  little  literature  then  as  there 
is  now,  and  I  cannot  say  anything  worse  of  our  school 
reading;  but  I  was  not  really  very  much  in  school, 
and  so  I  got  small  harm  from  it.  The  printing-office 
was  my  school  from  a  very  early  date.  My  father 
thoroughly  believed  in  it,  and  he  had  his  beliefs  as  to 
work,  which  he  illustrated  as  soon  as  we  were  old 
enough  to  learn  the  trade  he  followed.  We  could  go 
to  school  and  study,  or  we  could  go  into  the  printing- 
office  and  work,  with  an  equal  chance  of  learning,  but 
we  could  not  be  idle ;  we  must  do  something,  for  our 
souls'  sake,  though  he  was  willing  enough  we  should 
play,  and  he  liked  himself  to  go  into  the  woods  with 


THE    BOOKCASE    AT    HOME. 

us,  and  to  enjoy  the  pleasures  that  manhood  can  share 
with  childhood.  I  suppose  that  as  the  world  goes 
now  we  were  poor.  His  income  was  never  above 
twelve  hundred  a  year,  and  his  family  was  large  ;  but 
nobody  was  rich  there  or  then ;  we  lived  in  the  simple 
abundance  of  that  time  and  place,  and  we  did  not 
know  that  we  were  poor.  As  yet  the  unequal  modern 
conditions  were  undreamed  of  (who  indeed  could  have 
dreamed  of  them  forty  or  fifty  years  ago  ?)  in  the  little 
Southern  Ohio  town  where  nearly  the  whole  of  my 
most  happy  boyhood  was  passed. 


II. 

GOLDSMITH. 

WHEN  I  began  to  have  literary  likings  of  my  own, 
and  to  love  certain  books  above  others,  the  first 
authors  of  my  heart  were  Goldsmith,  Cervantes,  and 
Irving.  In  the  sharply  foreshortened  perspective  of 
the  past  I  seem  to  have  read  them  all  at  once,  but  I 
am  aware  of  an  order  of  time  in  the  pleasure  they 
gave  me,  and  I  know  that  Goldsmith  came  first.  He 
came  so  early  that  I  cannot  tell  when  or  how  I  began 
to  read  him,  but  it  must  have  been  before  I  was  ten 
years  old.  I  read  other  books  about  that  time, 
notably  a  small  book  on  Grecian  and  Roman  mythol- 
ogy, which  I  perused  with  such  a  passion  for  those 
pagan  gods  and  goddesses  that,  if  it  had  ever  been  a 
question  of  sacrificing  to  Diana,  I  do  not  really  know 
whether  I  should  have  been  able  to  refuse.  I  adored 
indiscriminately  all  the  tribes  of  nymphs  and  naiads, 
demigods  and  heroes,  as  well  as  the  high  ones  of 


GOLDSMITH.  11 

Olympus ;  and  I  am  afraid  that  by  day  I  dwelt  in  a 
world  peopled  and  ruled  by  them,  though  I  faithfully 
said  my  prayers  at  night,  and  fell  asleep  in  sorrow  for 
my  sins.  I  do  not  know  in  the  least  how  Goldsmith's 
Greece  came  into  my  hands,  though  I  fancy  it  must 
have  been  procured  for  me  because  of  a  taste  which 
I  showed  for  that  kind  of  reading,  and  I  can  imagine 
no  greater  luck  for  a  small  boy  in  a  small  town  of 
Southwestern  Ohio  well-nigh  fifty  years  ago.  I  have 
the  books  yet ;  two  little,  stout  volumes  in  fine  print, 
with  the  marks  of  wear  on  them,  but  without  those 
dishonorable  blots,  or  those  other  injuries  which  boys 
inflict  upon  books  in  resentment  of  their  dullness,  or 
<out  of  mere  wantonness.  I  was  always  sensitive  to 
the  maltreatment  of  books ;  I  could  not  bear  to  see  a 
book  faced  down  or  dogs-eared  or  broken-backed.  It 
was  like  a  hurt  or  an  insult  to  a  thing  that  could  feel. 
Goldsmith's  history  of  Rome  came  to  me  much 
later,  but  quite  as  immemorably^  and  after  I  had 
formed  a  preference  for  the  Greek  Republics,  which  I 
dare  say  was  not  mistaken.  Of  course  I  liked  Athens 
best,  and  yet  there  was  something  in  the  fine  behavior 
of  the  Spartans  in  battle,  which  won  a  heart  formed 
for  hero-worship.  I  mastered  the  notion  of  their 
communism,  and  approved  of  their  iron  money,  with 


12  MY   LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

the  poverty  it  obliged  them  to,  yet  somehow  their 
cruel  treatment  of  the  Helots  failed  to  shock  me; 
perhaps  I  forgave  it  to  their  patriotism,  as  I  had  to 
forgive  many  ugly  facts  in  the  history  of  the  Romans 
to  theirs.  There  was  hardly  any  sort  of  bloodshed 
which  I  would  not  pardon  in  those  days  to  the 
slayers  of  tyrants ;  and  the  swagger  form  of  such  as 
dispatched  a  despot  with  a  fine  speech  was  so  much 
to  my  liking  that  I  could  only  grieve  that  I  was  born 
too  late  to  do  and  to  say  those  things. 

I  do  not  think  I  yet  felt  the  beauty  of  the  literature 
which  made  them  all  live  in  my  fancy,  that  I  con- 
ceived of  Goldsmith  as  an  artist  using  for  my  rapture 
the  finest  of  the  arts ;  and  yet  I  had  been  taught  to 
see  the  loveliness  of  poetry,  and  was  already  trying  to 
make  it  on  my  own  poor  account.  I  tried  to  make 
verses  like  those  I  listened  to  when  my  father  read 
Moore  and  Scott  to  my  mother,  but  I  heard  them 
with  no  such  happiness  as  I  read  my  beloved  histories, 
though  I  never  thought  then  of  attempting  to  write 
like  Goldsmith.  I  accepted  his  beautiful  work  as  ig- 
norantly  as  I  did  my  other  blessings.  I  was  concerned 
in  getting  at  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  and  I  did  not 
know  through  what  nimble  air  and  by  what  lovely 
ways  I  was  led  to  them.  Some  retrospective  percep- 


GOLDSMITH.  13 

tion  of  this  came  long  afterward  when  I  read  his 
essays,  and  after  I  knew  all  of  his  poetry,  and  later 
yet  when  I  read  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield ;  but  for  the 
present  my  eyes  were  holden,  as  the  eyes  of  a  boy 
mostly  are  in  the  world  of  art.  What  I  wanted  with 
my  Greeks  and  Romans  after  I  got  at  them  was 
to  be  like  them,  or  at  least  to  turn  them  to  account 
in  verse,  and  in  dramatic  verse  at  that.  The  Romans 
were  less  civilized  than  the  Greeks,  and  so  were  more 
like  boys,  and  more  to  a  boy's  purpose.  I  did  not 
make  literature  of  the  Greeks,  but  I  got  a  whole 
tragedy  out  of  the  Romans  ;  it  was  a  rhymed  tragedy, 
and  in  octosyllabic  verse,  like  the  Lady  of  the  Lake. 
I  meant  it  to  be  acted  by  my  schoolmates,  but  I  am 
not  sure  that  I  ever  made  it  known  to  them.  Still, 
they  were  not  ignorant  of  my  reading,  and  I  remem- 
ber how  proud  I  was  when  a  certain  boy,  who  had 
always  whipped  me  when  we  fought  together,  and  so 
outranked  me  in  that  little  boys'  world,  once  sent  to 
ask  me  the  name  of  the  Roman  emperor  who  lamented 
at  nightfall,  when  he  had  done  nothing  worthy,  that 
he  had  lost  a  day.  The  boy  was  going  to  use  the 
story  in  a  composition,  as  we  called  the  school  themes 
then,  and  I  told  him  the  emperor's  name  ;  I  could  not 
tell  him  now  without  turning  to  the  book. 


14  MY     LITEEAEY   PASSIONS. 

My  reading  gave  me  no  standing  among  the  boys, 
and  I  did  not  expect  it  to  rank  me  with  boys  who 
were  more  valiant  in  fight  or  in  play  ;  and  I  have 
since  found  that  literature  gives  one  no  more  certain 
station  in  the  world  of  men's  activities,  either  idle  or 
useful.  We  literary  folk  try  to  believe  that  it  does, 
but  that  is  all  nonsense.  At  every  period  of  life, 
among  boys  or  men,  we  are  accepted  when  they  are 
at  leisure,  and  want  to  be  amused,  and  at  best  we  are 
tolerated  rather  than  accepted.  I  must  have  told  the 
boys  stories  out  of  my  Goldsmith's  Greece  and  Rome 
or  it  would  not  have  been  known  that  I  had  read 
them,  but  I  have  no  recollection  now  of  doing  so, 
while  I  distinctly  remember  rehearsing  the  allegories 
and  fables  of  the  Gesta  Romanorum,  a  book  which 
seems  to  have  been  in  my  hands  about  the  same  time 
or  a  little  later.  I  had  a  delight  in  that  stupid 
collection  of  monkish  legends  which  I  cannot  account 
for  now,  and  which  persisted  in  spite  of  the  night- 
mare confusion  it  made  of  my  ancient  Greeks  and 
Romans.  They  were  not  at  all  the  ancient  Greeks 
and  Romans  of  Goldsmith's  histories. 

I  cannot  say  at  what  times  I  read  these  books,  but 
they  must  have  been  odd  times,  for  life  was  very  full 
of  play  then,  and  was  already  beginning  to  be  troubled 


GOLDSMITH.  15 

with  work.  As  I  have  said,  I  was  to  and  fro  between 
the  school-house  and  the  printing-office  so  much  that 
when  I  tired  of  the  one  I  must  have  been  very 
promptly  given  my  choice  of  the  other.  The  reading, 
however,  somehow  went  on  pretty  constantly,  and  no 
doubt  my  love  for  it  won  me  a  chance  for  it.  There 
were  some  famous  cherry-trees  in  our  yard,  which,  as 
I  look  back  at  them,  seem  to  have  been  in  flower  or 
fruit  the  year  round ;  and  in  one  of  them  there  was  a 
level  branch  where  a  boy  could  sit  with  a  book  till  his 
dangling  legs  went  to  sleep,  or  till  some  idler  or 
busier  boy  came  to  the  gate  and  called  him  down  to 
play  marbles  or  go  swimming.  When  this  happened 
the  ancient  world  was  roiled  up  like  a  scroll,  and  put 
away  until  the  next  day,  with  all  its  orators  and  con- 
spirators, its  nymphs  and  satyrs,  gods  and  demigods ; 
though  sometimes  they  escaped  at  night  and  got  into 
the  boy's  dreams. 

I  do  not  think  I  cared  as  much  as  some  of  the  other 
boys  for  the  Arabian  Nights  or  Robinson  Crusoe,  but 
when  it  came  to  the  Ingenious  Gentleman  of  La 
Mancha,  I  was  not  only  first,  I  was  sole. 

Before  I  speak,  however,  of  the  beneficent  humorist 
who  next  had  my  boyish  heart  after  Goldsmith,  let 
me  acquit  myself  in  full  of  my  debt  to  that  not  un- 


16  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

equal  or  unkindred  spirit.  I  have  said  it  was  long 
after  I  had  read  those  histories,  full  of  his  inalienable 
charm,  mere  pot-boilers  as  they  were,  and  far  beneath 
his  more  willing  efforts,  that  I  came  to  know  his 
poetry.  My  father  must  have  read  the  Deserted 
Village  to  us,  and  told  us  something  of  the  author's 
pathetic  life,  for  I  cannot  remember  when  I  first  knew 
of  "sweet  Auburn,"  or  had  the  light  of  the  poet's  own 
troubled  day  upon  the  "  loveliest  village  of  the  plain." 
The  Vicar  of  Wakefield  must  have  come  into  my  life 
after  that  poem  and  before  The  Traveler.  It  was 
when  I  would  have  said  that  I  knew  all  Goldsmith. 
We  often  give  ourselves  credit  for  knowledge  in  this 
way  without  having  any  tangible  assets ;  and  my  read- 
ing has  always  been  very  desultory.  I  should  like  to 
say  here  that  the  reading  of  any  one  who  reads  to 
much  purpose  is  always  very  desultory,  but  perhaps  I 
had  better  not  say  so,  but  merely  state  the  fact  in  my 
case,  and  own  that  I  never  read  any  one  author  quite 
through  without  wandering  from  him  to  others. 
When  I  first  read  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  (for  I  have 
since  read  it  several  times,  and  hope  yet  to  read  it 
many  times,)  I  found  its  persons  and  incidents  familiar, 
and  so  I  suppose  I  must  have  heard  it  read.  It  is 
still  for  me  one  of  the  most  modern  novels :  that  is  to 


GOLDSMITH.  17 

say,  one  of  the  best.  It  is  unmistakably  good  up  to 
a  certain  point,  and  then  unmistakably  bad,  but  with 
always  good  enough  in  it  to  be  forever  imperishable. 
Kindness  and  gentleness  are  never  out  of  fashion ;  it 
is  these  in  Goldsmith  which  make  him  our  contempo- 
rary, and  it  is  worth  the  while  of  any  young  person 
presently  intending  deathless  renown  to  take  a  little 
thought  of  them.  They  are  the  source  of  all  refine- 
ment, and  I  do  not  believe  that  the  best  art  in  any 
kind  exists  without  them.  The  style  is  the  man,  and 
he  cannot  hide  himself,  in  any  garb  of  words  so  that 
we  shall  not  know  somehow  what  manner  of  man  he 
is  within  it ;  his  speech  betrayeth  him,  not  only  as  to 
his  country  and  his  race,  but  more  subtly  yet  as  to  his 
heart,  and  the  loves  and  hates  of  his  heart.  As  to 
Goldsmith,  I  do  not  think  that  a  man  of  harsh  and 
arrogant  nature,  of  worldly  and  selfish  soul,  could 
ever  have  written  his  style,  and  I  do  think  that,  in  far 
greater  measure  than  criticism  has  recognized,  his 
spiritual  quality,  his  essential  friendliness,  expressed 
itself  in  the  literary  beauty  that  wins  the  heart  as  well 
as  takes  the  fancy  in  his  work. 

I  should  have  my  reservations  and  my  animadver- 
sions if  it  came  to  close  criticism  of  his  work,  but  I 
am  glad  that  he  was  the  first  author  I  loved,  and  that 
B 


18  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

even  before  I  knew  I  loved  him  I  was  his  devoted 
reader.  I  was  not  consciously  his  admirer  till  I  began 
to  read,  when  I  was  fourteen,  a  little  volume  of  his 
essays,  made  up,  I  dare  say,  from  the  Citizen  of  the 
World  and  other  unsuccessful  ventures  of  his.  It  con- 
tained the  papers  on  Beau  Tibbs,  among  others,  and  I 
tried  to  write  sketches  and  studies  of  life  in  their 
manner.  But  this  attempt  at  Goldsmith's  manner 
followed  a  long  time  after  I  tried  to  write  in  the  style 
of  Edgar  A.  Poe,  as  I  knew  it  from  his  tales  of  the 
Grotesque  and  Arabesque.  I  suppose  the  very 
poorest  of  these  was  the  Devil  in  the  Belfry,  but 
such  as  it  was  I  followed  it  as  closely  as  I  could  in 
the  Devil  in  the  Smoke-Pipes ;  I  meant  tobacco-pipes. 
The  resemblance  was  noted  by  those  to  whom  I  read 
my  story ;  I  alone  could  not  see  it  or  would  not  own 
it,  and  I  really  felt  it  a  hardship  that  I  should  be 
found  to  have  produced  an  imitation. 

It  was  the  first  time  I  had  imitated  a  prose  writer, 
though  I  had  imitated  several  poets  like  Moore, 
Campbell,  and  Goldsmith  himself.  I  have  never 
greatly  loved  an  author  without  wishing  to  write  like 
him.  I  have  now  no  reluctance  to  confess  that,  and  I 
do  not  see  why  I  should  not  say  that  it  was  a  long 
time  before  I  found  it  best  to  be  as  like  myself  as  I 


GOLDSMITH.  19 

could,  even  when  I  did  not  think  so  well  of  myself  as 
of  some  others.  I  hope  I  shall  always  be  able  and 
willing  to  learn  something  from  the  masters  of  litera- 
ture and  still  be  myself,  but  for  the  young  writer  this 
seems  impossible.  He  must  form  himself  from  time 
to  time  upon  the  different  authors  he  is  in  love  with, 
but  when  he  has  done  this  he  must  wish  it  not  to  be 
known,  for  that  is  natural  too.  The  lover  always 
desires  to  ignore  the  object  of  his  passion,  and  the 
adoration  which  a  young  writer  has  for  a  great  one  is 
truly  a  passion  passing  the  love  of  women.  I  think 
it  hardly  less  fortunate  that  Cervantes  was  one  of  my 
early  passions,  though  I  sat  at  his  feet  with  no  more 
sense  of  his  mastery  than  I  had  of  Goldsmith's. 


IIL 

CERVANTES. 

I  RECALL  very  fully  the  moment  and  the  place  when 
I  first  heard  of  Don  Quixote,  while  as  yet  I  could  not 
connect  it  very  distinctly  with  anybody's  authorship. 
I  was  still  too  young  to  conceive  of  authorship,  even 
in  my  own  case,  and  wrote  my  miserable  verses  with- 
out any  notion  of  literature,  or  of  anything  but  the 
pleasure  of  seeing  them  actually  come  out  rightly 
rhymed  and  measured.  The  moment  was  at  the  close 
of  a  summer's  day  just  before  supper,  which,  in  our 
house,  we  had  lawlessly  late,  and  the  place  was  the 
kitchen  where  my  mother  was  going  about  her  work, 
and  listening  as  she  could  to  what  my  father  was  tell- 
ing my  brother  and  me  and  an  apprentice  of  ours, 
who  was  like  a  -brother  to  us  both,  of  a  book  that  he 
had  once  read.  We  boys  were  all  shelling  peas,  but 
the  story,  as  it  went  on,  rapt  us  from  the  poor  em- 
ploy, and  whatever  our  fingers  were  doing  our  spirits 


CERVANTES.  21 

were  away  in  that  strange  land  of  adventures  and  mis- 
haps, where  the  fevered  life  of  the  knight  truly  with- 
out fear  and  without  reproach  burned  itself  out.  I 
dare  say  that  my  father  tried  to  make  us  understand 
the  satirical  purpose  of  the  book.  I  vaguely  remember 
his  speaking  of  the  books  of  chivalry  it  was  meant  to 
ridicule ;  but  a  boy  could  not  care  for  this,  and  what 
I  longed  to  do  at  once  was  to  get  that  book  and 
plunge  into  its  story.  He  told  us  at  random  of  the 
attack  on  the  windmills  and  the  flocks  of  sheep,  of 
the  night  in  the  valley  of  the  fulling-mills  with  their 
trip-hammers,  of  the  inn  and  the  muleteers,  of  the 
tossing  of  Sancho  in  the  blanket,  of  the  island  that 
was  given  him  to  govern,  and  of  all  the  merry  pranks 
at  the  duke's  and  duchess's,  of  the  liberation  of  the 
galley-slaves,  of  the  capture  of  Mambrino's  helmet, 
and  of  Sancho's  invention  of  the  enchanted  Dulcinea, 
and  whatever  else  there  was  wonderful  and  delight- 
ful in  the  most  wonderful  and  delightful  book  in  the 
world.  I  do  not  know  when  or  where  my  father  got 
it  for  me,  and  I  am  aware  of  an  appreciable  time 
that  passed  between  my  hearing  of  it  and  my  having 
it.  The  event  must  have  been  most  important  to 
me,  and  it  is  strange  I  cannot  fix  the  moment  when 
the  precious  story  came  into  my  hands;  though  for 


22  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

the  matter  of  that  there  is  nothing  more  capricious 
than  a  child's  memory,  what  it  will  hold  and  what  it 
will  lose. 

It  is  certain  my  Don  Quixote  was  in  two  small,  stout 
volumes  not  much  bigger  each  than  my  Goldsmith's 
Greece,  bound  in  a  sort  of  Jaw-calf,  well  fitted  to  with- 
stand the  wear  they  were  destined  to  undergo.  The 
translation  was,  of  course,  the  old-fashioned  version  of 
Jervas,  which,  whether  it  was  a  closely  faithful  version 
or  not,  was  honest  eighteenth -century  English,  and 
reported  faithfully  enough  the  spirit  of  the  original. 
If  it  had  any  literary  influence  with  me  the  influence 
must  have  been  good.  But  I  cannot  make  out  that  I 
was  sensible  of  the  literature ;  it  was  the  forever  en- 
chanting story  that  I  enjoyed.  I  exulted  in  the  bound- 
less freedom  of  the  design ;  the  open  air  of  that  im- 
mense scene,  where  adventure  followed  adventure  with 
the  natural  sequence  of  life,  and  the  days  and  the 
nights  were  not  long  enough  for  the  events  that 
thronged  them,  amidst  the  fields  and  woods,  the 
streams  and  hills,  the  highways  and  byways,  hostel- 
ries  and  hovels,  prisons  and  palaces,  which  were  the 
setting  of  that  matchless  history.  I  took  it  as  simply 
as  I  took  everything  else  in  the  world  about  me.  It 
was  full  of  meaning  that  I  could  not  grasp,  and  there 


CERVANTES.  23 

were  significances  of  the  kind  that  literature  unhappily 
abounds  in,  but  they  were  lost  upon  my  innocence.  I 
did  not  know  whether  it  was  well  written  or  not ;  I 
never  thought  about  it ;  it  was  simply  there  in  its  vast 
entirety,  its  inexhaustible  opulence,  and  I  was  rich  in 
it  beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice. 

My  father  must  have  told  us  that  night  about  Cer- 
vantes as  well  as  about  his  Don  Quixote,  for  I  seem 
to  have  known  from  the  beginning  that  he  was  once  a 
slave  in  Algiers,  and  that  he  had  lost  a  hand  in  battle, 
and  I  loved  him  with  a  sort  of  personal  affection,  as 
if  he  were  still  living  and  he  could  somehow  return 
my  love.  His  name  and  nature  endeared  the  Spanish 
name  and  nature  to  me,  so  that  they  were  always  my 
romance,  and  to  this  day  I  cannot  meet  a  Spanish  man 
without  clothing  him  in  something  of  the  honor  and 
worship  I  lavisned  upon  Cervantes  when  I  was  a  child. 
While  I  was  in  the  full  flush  of  this  ardor  there  came 
to  see  our  school,  one  day,  a  Mexican  gentleman  who 
was  studying  the  American  system  of  education ;  a 
mild,  fat,  saffron  man,  whom  I  could  almost  have 
died  to  please  for  Cervantes'  and  Don  Quixote's  sake, 
because  I  knew  he  spoke  their  tongue.  But  he  smiled 
upon  us  all,  and  I  had  no  chance  to  distinguish  myself 
from  the  rest  by  any  act  of  devotion  before  the  blessed 


24  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

vision  faded,  though  for  long  afterward,  in  impas- 
sioned reveries,  I  accosted  him  and  claimed  him  kin- 
dred because  of  my  fealty,  and  because  I  would  have 
been  Spanish  if  I  could. 

I  would  not  have  had  the  boy-world  about  me  know 
anything  of  these  fond  dreams ;  and  it  was  my  tastes 
alone,  my  passions,  which  were  alien  there ;  in  every- 
thing else  I  was  as  much  a  citizen  as  any  boy  who  had 
never  heard  of  Don  Quixote.  But  I  believe  that  I 
carried  the  book  about  with  me  most  of  the  time,  so 
as  not  to  lose  any  chance  moment  of  reading  it.  Even 
in  the  blank  of  certain  years,  when  I  added  little  other 
reading  to  my  store,  I  must  still  have  been  reading  it. 
This  was  after  we  had  removed  from  the  town  where 
the  earlier  years  of  my  boyhood  were  passed,  and  I 
had  barely  adjusted  myself  to  the  strange  environ- 
ment when  one  of  my  uncles  asked  me  to  come  with 
him  and  learn  the  drug  business,  in  the  place,  forty 
miles  away,  where  he  practiced  medicine.  We  made 
the  long  journey,  longer  than  any  I  have  made  since, 
in  the  stage-coach  of  those  days,  and  we  arrived  at 
his  house  about  twilight,  he  glad  to  get  home,  and  I 
sick  to  death  with  yearning  for  the  home  I  had  left. 
I  do  not  know  how  it  was  that  in  this  state,  when  all 
the  world  was  one  hopeless  blackness  around  me,  I 


QEBVANTES.  25 

should  have  got  my  Don  Quixote  out  of  my  bag ;  I 

seem  to  have  had  it  with  me  as  an  essential  part  of 

* 
my  equipment  for   my  new  career.     Perhaps  I  had 

been  asked  to  show  it,  with  the  notion  of  beguiling  me 
from  my  misery;  perhaps  I  was  myself  trying  to 
drown  my  sorrows  in  it.  But  anyhow  I  have  before 
me  now  the  vision  of  my  sweet  young  aunt  and  her 
young  sister  looking  over  her  shoulder,  as  they  stood 
together  on  the  lawn  in  the  summer  evening  light. 
My  aunt  held  my  Don  Quixote  open  in  one  hand, 
while  she  clasped  with  the  other  the  child  she  carried 
on  her  arm.  She  looked  at  the  book,  and  then  from 
time  to  time  she  looked  at  me,  very  kindly  but  very 
curiously,  with  a  faint  smile,  so  that  as  I  stood  there, 
inwardly  writhing  in  my  bashfulness,  I  had  the  sense 
that  in  her  eyes  I  was  a  queer  boy.  She  returned  the 
book  without  comment,  after  some  questions,  and  I 
took  it  off  to  my  room,  where  the  confidential  friend 
of  Cervantes  cried  himself  to  sleep. 

In  the  morning  I  rose  up  and  told  them  I  could  not 
stand  it,  and  I  was  going  home.  Nothing  they  could 
say  availed,  and  my  uncle  went  down  to  the  stage- 
office  with  me  and  took  my  passage  back. 

The  horror  of  cholera  was  then  in  the  land ;  and  we 
heard  in  the  stage-office  that  a  man  lay  dead  of  it  in 


26  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

the  hotel  overhead.  But  my  uncle  led  me  to  his  drug- 
store, where  the  stage  was  to  call  for  me,  and  made 
me  taste  a  little  camphor ;  with  this  prophylactic,  Cer- 
vantes and  I  somehow  got  home  together  alive. 

The  reading  of  Don  Quixote  went  on  throughout 
my  boyhood,  so  that  I  cannot  recall  any  distinctive 
period  of  it  when  I  was  not,  more  or  less,  reading  that 
book.  In  a  boy's  way  I  knew  it  well  when  I  was  ten, 
and  a  few  years  ago,  when  I  was  fifty,  I  took  it  up  in 
the  admirable  new  version  of  Ormsby,  and  found  it  so 
full  of  myself  and  of  my  own  irrevocable  past  that  I 
did  not  find  it  very  gay.  But  I  made  a  great  many 
discoveries  in  it;  things  I  had  not  dreamt  of  were 
there,  and  must  always  have  been  there,  and  other 
things  wore  a  new  face,  and  made  a  new  effect  upon 
me.  I  had  my  doubts,  ray  reserves,  where  once  I  had 
given  it  my  whole  heart  without  question,  and  yet  in 
what  formed  the  greatness  of  the  book  it  seemed  to 
me  greater  than  ever.  I  believe  that  its  free  and  sim- 
ple design,  where  event  follows  event  without  the 
fettering  control  of  intrigue,  but  where  all  grows  nat- 
urally out  of  character  and  conditions,  is  the  supreme 
form  of  fiction ;  and  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  if  we 
ever  have  a  great  American  novel  it  must  be  built  up- 
on some  such  large  and  noble  lines.  As  for  the  cen- 


CERVANTES.  27 

tral  figure,  Don  Quixote  himself,  in  his  dignity  and 
generosity,  his  unselfish  ideals,  and  his  fearless  devo- 
tion to  them,  he  is  always  heroic  and  beautiful ;  and  I 
was  glad  to  find  in  my  latest  look  at  his  history  that 
I  had  truly  conceived  of  him  at  first,  and  had  felt  the 
sublimity  of  his  nature.  I  did  not  want  to  laugh  at 
him  so  much,  and  I  could  not  laugh  at  all  any  more 
at  some  of  the  things  done  to  him.  Once  they  seemed 
funny,  but  now  only  cruel,  and  even  stupid,  so  that  it 
was  strange  to  realize  his  qualities  and  indignities  as 
both  flowing  from  the  same  mind.  But  in  my  mature 
experience,  which  threw  a  broader  light  on  the  fable, 
I  was  happy  to  keep  my  old  love  of  an  author  who 
had  been  almost  personally  dear  to  me. 


IV. 

IRVING. 

I  HAVE  told  how  Cervantes  made  his  race  precious 
to  me,  and  I  am  sure  that  it  must  have  been  he  who 
fitted  me  to  understand  and  enjoy  the  American  author 
who  now  stayed  me  on  Spanish  ground  and  kept  me 
happy  in  Spanish  air,  though  I  cannot  trace  the  tie  in 
time  and  circumstance  between  Irving  and  Cervantes. 
The  most  I  can  make,  sure  of  is  that  I  read  the  Con- 
quest of  Granada  after  I  read  Don  Quixote,  and  that 
I  loved  the  historian  so  much  because  I  had  loved  the 
novelist  much  more.  Of  course  I  did  not  perceive 
then  that  Irving's  charm  came  largely  from  Cervantes 
and  the  other  Spanish  humorists  yet  unknown  to  me, 
and  that  he  had  formed  himself  upon  them  almost  as 
much  as  upon  Goldsmith,  but  I  dare  say  that  this  fact 
had  insensibly  a  great  deal  to  do  with  my  liking. 
Afterward  I  came  to  see  it,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
see  what  was  Irving's  own  in  Irving ;  to  feel  his  native, 


IRVING.  29 

if  somewhat  attenuated  humor,  and  his  original,  if 
somewhat  too  studied  grace.  But  as  yet  there  was 
no  critical  question  with  me.  I  gave  my  heart  simply 
and  passionately  to  the  author  who  made  the^scenes 
of  that  most  pathetic  history  live  in  my  sympathy,  and 
companioned  me  with  the  stately  and  gracious  actors 
in  them. 

I  really  cannot  say  now  whether  I  loved  the  Moors  or 
the  Spaniards  more.  I  fought  on  both  sides ;  I  would 
not  have  had  the  Spaniards  beaten,  and  yet  when  the 
Moors  lost  I  was  vanquished  with  them  ;  and  when  the 
poor  young  King  Boabdil  (I  was  his  devoted  partisan 
and  at  the  same  time  a  follower  of  his  fiery  old  uncle 
and  rival,  Hamet  el  Zegri)  heaved  the  Last  Sigh  of  the 
Moor,  as  his  eyes  left  the  roofs  of  Granada  forever, 
it  was  as  much  my  grief  as  if  it  had  burst  from  my 
own  breast.  I  put  both  these  princes  into  the  first 
and  last  historical  romance  I  ever  wrote.  I  have  now 
no  idea  what  they  did  in  it,  but  as  the  story  never 
came  to  a  conclusion  it  does  not  greatly  matter.  I 
had  never  yet  read  an  historical  romance  that  I  can 
make  sure  of,  and  probably  my  attempt  must  have 
been  based  almost  solely  upon  the  facts  of  Irving's 
history.  I  am  certain  I  could  not  have  thought  of 
adding  anything  to  them,  or  at  all  varying  them. 


30  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

In  reading  his  Chronicle  I  suffered  for  a  time  from 
its  attribution  to  Fray  Antonio  Agapida,  the  pious 
monk  whom  he  feigns  to  have  written  it,  just  as  in 
reading  Don  Quixote  I  suffered  from  Cervantes  mas- 
querading as  the  Moorish  scribe,  Cid  Hamet  Ben  En- 
geli.  My  father  explained  the  literary  caprice,  but  it 
remained  a  confusion  and  a  trouble  for  me,  and  I 
made  a  practice  of  skipping  those  passages  where 
either  author  insisted  upon  his  invention.  I  will  own 
that  I  am  rather  glad  that  sort  of  thing  seems  to  be 
out  of  fashion  now,  and  I  think  the  directer  and  frank- 
er methods  of  modern  fiction  will  forbid  its  revival. 
Thackeray  was  fond  of  such  open  disguises,  and  liked 
to  greet  his  reader  from  the  mask  of  Yellowplush  and 
Michael  Angelo  Titmarsh,  but  it  seems  to  me  this  was 
in  his  least  modern  moments. 

My  Conquest  of  Granada  was  in  two  octavo  vol- 
umes, bound  in  drab  boards,  and  printed  on  paper  very 
much  yellowed  with  time  at  its  irregular  edges.  I  do 
not  know  when  the  books  happened  in  my  hands.  I 
have  no  remembrance  that  they  were  in  anywise  of- 
fered or  commended  to  me,  and  in  a  sort  of  way  they 
were  as  authentically  mine  as  if  I  had  made  them.  I 
saw  them  at  home,  not  many  months  ago,  in  my  fa- 
ther's library  (it  has  long  outgrown  the  old  bookcase, 


IRVING.  31 

which  has  gone  I  know  not  where),  and  upon  the 
whole  I  rather  shrank  from  taking  them  down,  much 
more  from  opening  them,  though  I  could  not  say  why, 
unless  it  was  from  the  fear  of  perhaps  finding  the 
ghost  of  my  boyish  self  within,  pressed  flat  like  a 
withered  leaf,  somewhere  between  the  familiar  pages. 
When  I  learned  Spanish  it  was  with  the  purpose, 
never  yet  fulfilled,  of  writing  the  life  of  Cervantes,  al- 
though I  have  since  had  some  forty  odd  years  to  do  it 
in.  I  taught  myself  the  language,  or  began  to  do  so, 
when  I  knew  nothing  of  the  English  grammar  but  the 
prosody  at  the  end  of  the  book.  My  father  had  the 
contempt  of  familiarity  with  it,  having  himself  written 
a  very  brief  sketch  of  our  accidence,  and  he  seems  to 
have  let  me  plunge  into  the  sea  of  Spanish  verbs  and 
adverbs,  nouns  and  pronouns,  and  all  the  rest,  when 
as  yet  I  could  not  confidently  call  them  by  name,  with 
the  serene  belief  that  if  I  did  not  swim  I  would .  still 
somehow  get  ashore  without  sinking.  The  end,  per- 
haps, justified  him,  and  I  suppose  I  did  not  do  all 
that  work  without  getting  some  strength  from  it ;  but 
I  wish  I  had  back  the  time  that  it  cost  me  ;  I  should 
like  to  waste  it  in  some  other  way.  However,  time 
seemed  interminable  then,  and  I  thought  there  would 
be  enough  of  it  for  me  in  which  to  read  all  Spanish 


32  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

literature ;  or,  at  least,  I  did  not  propose  to  do  any- 
thing less. 

I  followed  Irving,  too,  in  my  later  reading,  but  at 
haphazard,  and  with  other  authors  at  the  same  time. 
I  did  my  poor  best  to  be  amused  by  his  Knickerbocker 
History  of  New  York,  because  my  father  liked  it  so 
much,  but  secretly  I  found  it  heavy ;  and  a  few  years 
ago  when  I  went  carefully  through  it  again  I  could 
not  laugh.  Even  as  a  boy  I  found  some  other  things 
of  his  up-hill  work.  There  was  the  beautiful  manner, 
but  the  thought  seemed  thin ;  and  I  do  not  remember 
having  been  much  amused  by  Bracebridge  Hall, 
though  I  read  it  devoutly,  and  with  a  full  sense  that 
it  would  be  very  comme  ilfaut  to  like  it.  But  I  did 
like  the  life  of  Goldsmith ;  I  liked  it  a  great  deal  bet- 
ter than  the  more  authoritative  life  by  Forster,  and  I 
think  there  is  a  deeper  and  sweeter  sense  of  Goldsmith 
in  it.  Better  than  all,  except  the  Conquest  of  Grana- 
da, I  liked  the  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow  and  the  story 
of  Rip  Van  Winkle,  with  their  humorous  and  affec- 
tionate caricatures  of  life  that  was  once  of  our  own 
soil  and  air ;  and  the  Tales  of  the  Alhambra,  which 
transported  me  again  to  the  scenes  of  my  youth  beside 
the  Xenil.  It  was  long  after  my  acquaintance  with 
his  work  that  I  came  to  a  due  sense  of  Irving  as  an 


IRVING.  33 

artist,  and  perhaps  I  have  come  to  feel  a  full  sense  of 
it  only  now,  when  I  perceive  that  he  worked  willingly 
only  when  he  worked  inventively.  At  last  I  can  do 
justice  to  the  exquisite  conception  of  his  Conquest  of 
Granada,  a  study  of  history  which,  in  unique  measure, 
conveys  not  only  the  pathos,  but  the  humor  of  one  of 
the  most  splendid  and  impressive  situations  in  the  ex- 
perience of  the  race.  Very  possibly  something  of  the 
severer  truth  might  have  been  sacrificed  to  the  effect 
of  the  pleasing  and  touching  tale,  but  I  do  not  under- 
stand that  this  was  really  done.  Upon  the  whole  I 
am  very  well  content  with  my  first  three  loves  in  liter- 
ature, and  if  I  were  to  choose  for  any  other  boy  I  do 
not  see  how  I  could  choose  better  than  Goldsmith  and 
Cervantes  and  Irving,  kindred  spirits,  and  each  not 
a  master  only,  but  a  sweet  and  gentle  friend,  whose 
kindness  could  not  fail  to  profit  him. 


V. 

FIRST  FICTION  AND  DRAMA. 

IN  my  own  case  there  followed  my  acquaintance 
with  these  authors  certain  Boeotian  years,  when  if  I  did 
not  go  backward  I  scarcely  went  forward  in  the  paths 
I  had  set  out  upon.  They  were  years  of  the  work,  of 
the  over-work,  indeed,  which  falls  to  the  lot  of  so  many, 
that  I  should  be  ashamed  to  speak  of  it  except  in 
accounting  for  the  fact.  My  father  had  sold  his  paper 
in  Hamilton  and  had  bought  an  interest  in  another  at 
Dayton,  and  we  were  all  straining  our  utmost  to  help 
pay  for  it.  My  daily  tasks  began  so  early  and  ended 
so  late  that  I  had  little  time,  even  if  I  had  the  spirit, 
for  reading ;  and  it  was  not  till  what  we  thought  ruin, 
but  what  was  really  release,  came  to  us  that  I  got 
back  again  to  my  books.  Then  we  went  to  live  in  the 
country  for  a  year,  and  that  stress  of  toil,  with  the 
shadow  of  failure  darkening  all,  fell  from  me  like 
the  horror  of  an  evil  dream.  The  only  new  book 
which  I  remember  to  have  read  in  those  two  or  three 


FIRST    FICTION    AND    DRAMA.  35 

years  at  Dayton,  when  I  hardly  remember  to  have 
read  any  old  ones,  was  the  novel  of  Jane  Eyre,  which 
I  took  in  very  imperfectly,  and  which  I  associate  with 
the  first  rumor  of  the  Rochester  Knockings,  then  just 
beginning  to  reverberate  through  a  world  that  they 
have  not  since  left  wholly  at  peace.  It  was  a  gloomy 
Sunday  afternoon  when  the  book  came  under  my 
hand ;  and  mixed  with  my  interest  in  the  story  was 
an  anxiety  lest  the  pictures  on  the  walls  should 
leave  their  nails  and  come  and  lay  themselves  at  my 
feet ;  that  was  what  the  pictures  had  been  doing  in 
Rochester  and  other  places  where  the  disembodied  spir- 
its were  beginning  to  make  themselves  felt.  The  thing 
did  not  really  happen  in  my  case,  but  I  was  alone  in 
the  house,  and  it  might  very  easily  have  happened. 
If  very  little  came  to  me  in  those  days  from  books, 
on  the  other  hand,  my  acquaintance  with  the  drama 
vastly  enlarged  itself.  There  was  a  hapless  company 
of  players  in  the  town  from  time  to  time,  and  they 
came  to  us  for  their  printing.  I  believe  they  never 
paid  for  it,  or  at  least  never  wholly,  but  they  lavished 
free  passes  upon  us,  and  as  nearly  as  I  can  make  out, 
at  this  distance  of  time,  I  profited  by  their  gen- 
erosity every  night.  They  gave  two  or  three  plays 
at  every  performance  to  houses  ungratefully  small, 


36  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

but  of  a  lively  spirit  and  impatient  temper  that  would 
not  brook  delay  in  the  representation ;  and  they 
changed  the  bill  each  day.  In  this  way  I  became 
familiar  with  Shakespeare  before  I  read  him,  or  at 
least  such  plays  of  his  as  were  most  given  in  those 
days,  and  I  saw  Macbeth  and  Hamlet,  and  above  all 
Richard  III.,  again  and  again.  I  do  not  know  why 
my  delight  in  those  tragedies  did  not  send  me  to  the 
volume  of  his  plays,  which  was  all  the  time  in  the 
bookcase  at  home,  but  I  seem  not  to  have  thought  of 
it,  and  rapt  as  I  was  in  them  I  am  not  sure  that 
they  gave  me  greater  pleasure,  or  seemed  at  all  finer, 
than  Bollo,  The  Wife,  The  Stranger,  Barbarossa, 
The  Miser  of  Marseilles,  and  the  rest  of  the  melo- 
dramas, comedies  and  farces  that  I  saw  at  that  time. 
I  have  a  notion  that  there  were  some  clever  people  in 
one  of  these  companies,  and  that  the  lighter  pieces  at 
least  were  well  played,  but  I  may  be  altogether  wrong. 
The  gentleman  who  took  the  part  of  villain,  with  an 
unfailing  love  of  evil,  in  the  different  dramas,  used  to 
come  about  the  printing-office  a  good  deal,  and  I  was 
puzzled  to  find  him  a  very  mild  and  gentle  person. 
To  be  sure  he  had  a  mustache,  which  in  those  days 
devoted  a  man  to  wickedness,  but  by  day  it  was  a 
blond  mustache,  quite  flaxen,  in  fact,  and  not  at  all 


FIRST    FICTION    AND   DRAMA.  37 

the  dark  and  deadly  thing  it  was  behind  the  foot- 
lights at  night.  I  could  scarcely  gasp  in  his  presence, 
my  heart  bounded  so  in  awe  and  honor  of  him  when 
he  paid  a  visit  to  us;  perhaps  he  used  to  bring  the 
copy  of  the  showbills.  The  company  he  belonged  to 
left  town  in  the  adversity  habitual  with  them. 

Our  own  adversity  had  been  growing,  and  now  it 
became  overwhelming.  We  had  to  give  up  the  paper 
we  had  struggled  so  hard  to  keep,  but  when  the  worst 
came  it  was  not  half  so  bad  as  what  had  gone 
before.  There  was  no  more  waiting  till  midnight  for 
the  telegraphic  news,  no  more  waking  at  dawn  to 
deliver  the  papers,  no  more  weary  days  at  the  case, 
heavier  for  the  doom  hanging  over  us.  My  father 
and  his  brothers  had  long  dreamed  of  a  sort  of  family 
colony  somewhere  in  the  country,  and  now  the  uncle 
who  was  most  prosperous  bought  a  milling  property 
on  a  river  not  far  from  Dayton,  and  my  father  went 
out  to  take  charge  of  it  until  the  others  could  shape 
their  business  to  follow  him.  The  scheme  came  to 
nothing  finally,  but  in  the  meantime  we  escaped  from 
the  little  city  and  its  sorrowful  associations  of  fruitless 
labor,  and  had  a  year  in  the  country,  which  was 
blest,  at  least  to  us  children,  by  sojourn  in  a  log- 
cabiii,  while  a  house  was  building  for  us. 


VI. 

LONGFELLOW'S  SPANISH  STUDENT. 

THIS  log-cabin  had  a  loft,  where  we  boys  slept, 
and  in  the  loft  were  stored  in  barrels  the  books  that 
had  now  begun  to  overflow  the  bookcase.  I  do  not 
know  why  I  chose  the  loft  to  renew  my  long-neglected 
friendship  with  them.  The  light  could  not  have  been 
good,  though  if  I  brought  my  books  to  the  little 
gable  window  that  overlooked  the  groaning  and 
whistling  gristmill  I  could  see  well  enough.  But 
perhaps  I  liked  the  loft  best  because  the  books  were 
handiest  there,  and  because  I  could  be  alone.  At  any 
rate,  it  was  there  that  I  read  Longfellow's  Spanish 
Student,  which  I  found  in  an  old  paper  copy  of  his 
poems  in  one  of  the  barrels,  and  I  instantly  conceived 
for  it  the  passion  which  all  things  Spanish  inspired 
in  me.  As  I  read  I  not  only  renewed  my  acquaint- 
ance with  literature,  but  renewed  my  delight  in  people 
and  places  where  I  had  been  happy  before  those 


LONGFELLOW'S    SPANISH    STUDENT.  39 

heavy  years  in  Dayton.  At  the  same  time  I  felt  a 
little  jealousy,  a  little  grudge,  that  any  one  else  should 
love  them  as  well  as  I,  and  if  the  poem  had  not  been 
so  beautiful  I  should  have  hated  the  poet  for  trespass- 
ing on  my  ground.  But  I  could  not  hold  out  long 
against  the  witchery  of  his  verse.  The  Spanish  Stu- 
dent became  one  of  my  passions ;  a  minor  passion, 
not  a  grand  one,  like  Don  Quixote  and  the  Conquest 
of  Granada,  but  still  a  passion,  and  I  should  dread  a 
little  to  read  the  piece  now,  lest  I  should  disturb  my 
old  ideal  of  its  beauty.  The  hero's  rogue  servant, 
Chispa,  seemed  to  me,  then  and  long  afterward,  so  fine 
a  bit  of  Spanish  character  that  I  chose  his  name  for 
my  first  pseudonym  when  I  began  to  write  for  the 
newspapers,  and  signed  my  legislative  correspondence 
for  a  Cincinnati  paper  with  it.  I  was  in  love  with 
the  heroine,  the  lovely  dancer  whose  cachucha  turned 
my  head,  along  with  that  of  the  cardinal,  but  whose 
name  even  I  have  forgotten,  and  I  went  about  with 
the  thought  of  her  burning  in  my  heart,  as  if  she  had 
been  a  real  person. 


VII. 

SCOTT. 

ALL  the  while  I  was  bringing  up  the  long  arrears  of 
play  which  I  had  not  enjoyed  in  the  toil-years  at  Day- 
ton, and  was  trying  to  make  my  Spanish  reading  serve 
in  the  sports  that  we  had  in  the  woods  and  by  the 
river.  We  were  Moors  and  Spaniards  almost  as  often 
as  we  were  British  and  Americans,  or  settlers  and  In- 
dians. I  suspect  that  the  large,  mild  boy,  the  son  of 
a  neighboring  farmer,  who  mainly  shared  our  games, 
had  but  a  dim  notion  of  what  I  meant  by  my  strange 
people,  but  I  did  my  best  to  enlighten  him,  and  he 
helped  me  make  a  dream  out  of  my  life,  and  did  his 
best  to  dwell  in  the  region  of  unrealities  where  I  pref- 
erably had  my  being;  he  was  from  time  to  time  a 
Moor  when  I  think  he  would  rather  have  been  a  Mingo. 

I  got  hold  of  Scott's  poems,  too,  in  that  cabin  loft, 
and  read  most  of  the  tales  which  were  yet  unknown  to 
me  after  those  earlier  readings  of  my  father's.  I 


SCOTT.  41 

could  not  say  why  Harold  the  Dauntless  most  took  my 
fancy ;  the  fine,  strongly-flowing  rhythm  of  the  verse 
had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  it,  I  believe.  I  liked  these 
things,  all  of  them,  and  in  after  years  I  liked  the  Lady 
of  the  Lake  more  and  more,  and  from  mere  love  of  it 
got  great  lengths  of  it  by  heart ;  but  I  cannot  say  that 
Scott  was  then  or  ever  a  great  passion  with  me.  It 
was  a  sobered  affection  at  best,  which  came  from  my 
sympathy  with  his  love  of  nature,  and  the  whole  kindly 
and  humane  keeping  of  his  genius.  Many  years 
later,  during  the  month  when  I  was  waiting  for  my 
passport  as  Consul  for  Venice,  and  had  the  time  on 
my  hands,  I  passed  it  chiefly  in  reading  all  his  novels, 
one  after  another,  without  the  interruption  of  other 
reading.  Ivanhoe  I  had  known  before,  and  the  Bride 
of  Lammermoor  and  Woodstock,  but  the  rest  had  re- 
mained in  that  sort  of  abeyance  which  is  often  the  fate 
of  books  people  expect  to  read  as  a  matter  of  course, 
and  come  very  near  not  reading  at  all,  or  read  only 
very  late.  Taking  them  in  this  swift  sequence,  little  or 
nothing  of  them  remained  with  me,  and  my  experience 
with  them  is  against  that  sort  of  ordered  and  regular 
reading,  which  I  have  so  often  heard  advised  for  young 
people  by  their  elders.  I  always  suspect  their  elders 
of  not  having  done  that  kind  of  reading  themselves. 


42  MY     LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

For  my  own  part  I  believe  I  have  never  got  any 
good  from  a  book  that  I  did  not  read  lawlessly  and 
willfully,  out  of  all  leading  and  following,  and  merely 
because  I  wanted  to  read  it ;  and  I  here  make  bold  to 
praise  that  way  of  doing.  The  book  which  you  read 
from  a  sense  of  duty,  or  because  for  any  reason  you 
must,  does  not  commonly  make  friends  with  you.  It 
may  happen  that  it  will  yield  you  an  unexpected  de- 
light, but  this  will  be  in  its  own  unentreated  way  and 
in  spite  of  your  good  intentions.  Little  of  the  book  read 
for  a  purpose  stays  with  the  reader,  and  this  is  one 
reason  why  reading  for  review  is  so  vain  and  unprofit- 
able. I  have  done  a  vast  deal  of  this,  but  I  have  usu- 
ally been  aware  that  the  book  was  subtly  withholding 
from  me  the  best  a  book  can  give,  since  I  was  not 
reading  it  for  its  own  sake  and  because  I  loved  it,  but 
for  selfish  ends  of  my  own,  and  because  I  wished  to 
possess  myself  of  it  for  business  purposes,  as  it  were. 
The  reading  that  does  one  good,  and  lasting  good,  is 
the  reading  that  one  does  for  pleasure,  and  simply  and 
unselfishly,  as  children  do.  Art  will  still  withhold 
herself  from  thrift,  and  she  does  well,  for  nothing  but 
love  has  any  right  to  her. 

Little  remains  of  the  events  of  any  period,  however 
vivid  they  were  in  passing.     The  memory  may  hold 


SCOTT.  43 

record  of  everything,  as  it  is  believed,  but  it  will  not 
be  easily  entreated  to  give  up  its  facts,  and  I  find  my- 
self striving  in  vain  to  recall  the  things  that  I  must 
have  read  that  year  in  the  country.  Probably  I  read 
the  old  things  over ;  certainly  I  kept  on  with  Cervan- 
tes, and  very  likely  with  Goldsmith.  There  was  a 
delightful  history  of  Ohio,  stuffed  with  tales  of  the 
pioneer  times,  which  was  a  good  deal  in  the  hands  of 
us  boys ;  and  there  was  a  book  of  Western  Adventure, 
full  of  Indian  fights  and  captivities,  which  we  wore  to 
pieces.  Still,!  think  that  it  was  now  that  I  began  to 
have  a  literary  sense  of  what  I  was  reading.  I  wrote 
a  diary,  and  I  tried  to  give  its  record  form  and  style, 
but  mostly  failed.  The  versifying  which  I  was  always 
at  was  easier,  and  yielded  itself  more  to  my  hand.  I 
should  be  very  glad  to  know  at  present  what  it  dealt 
with. 


VIII. 

LIGHTER  FANCIES. 

WHEN  my  uncles  changed  their  minds  in  regard  to 
colonizing  their  families  at  the  mills,  as  they  did  in 
about  a  year,  it  became  necessary  for  my  father  to 
look  about  for  some  new  employment,  and  he  naturally 
looked  in  the  old  direction.  There  were  several 
schemes  for  getting  hold  of  this  paper  and  that,  and 
there  were  offers  that  came  to  nothing.  In  that  day 
there  were  few  salaried  editors  in  the  country  outside 
of  New  York,  and  the  only  hope  we  could  have  was 
of  some  place  as  printers  in  an  office  which  we  might 
finally  buy.  The  affair  ended  in  our  going  to  the 
State  capital,  where  my  father  found  work  as  a  report- 
er of  legislative  proceedings  for  one  of  the  daily  jour- 
nals, and  I  was  taken  into  the  office  as  a  compositor. 
In  this  way  I  came  into  living  contact  with  literature 
again,  and  the  day-dreams  began  once  more  over  the 
familiar  cases  of  type.  A  definite  literary  ambition 


LIGHTER   FANCIES.  45 

grew  up  in  me,  and  in  the  long  reveries  of  the  after- 
noon, when  I  was  distributing  my  case,  I  fashioned  a 
future  of  overpowering  magnificence  and  undying  ce- 
lebrity. I  should  be  ashamed  to  say  what  literary 
triumphs  I  achieved  in  those  preposterous  deliriums. 
What  I  actually  did  was  to  write  a  good  many  copies 
of  verse,  in  imitation,  never  owned,  of  Moore  and 
Goldsmith,  and  some  minor  poets,  whose  work  caught 
my  fancy,  as  I  read  it  in  the  newspapers  or  put  it 
into  type. 

One  of  my  pieces,  which  fell  so  far  short  of  my 
visionary  performances  as  to  treat  of  the  lowly  and 
familiar  theme  of  Spring,  was  the  first  thing  I  ever 
had  in  print.  My  father  offered  it  to  the  editor  of 
the  paper  I  worked  on,  and  I  first  knew,  with  mingled 
shame  and  pride,  of  what  he  had  done  when  I  saw  it 
in  the  journal.  In  the  tumult  of  my  emotions  I  prom- 
ised myself  that  if  I  got  through  this  experience  safely 
I  would  never  suffer  anything  else  of  mine  to  be  pub- 
lished ;  but  it  was  not  long  before  I  offered  the  editor 
a  poem  myself.  I  am  now  glad  to  think  it  dealt  with 
so  humble  a  fact  as  a  farmer's  family  leaving  their  old 
home  for  the  West.  The  only  fame  of  my  poem 
which  reached  me  was  when  another  boy  in  the  office 
quoted  some  lines  of  it  in  derision.  This  covered  me 


46  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

with  such  confusion  that  I  wonder  that  I  did  not  van- 
ish from  the  earth.  At  the  same  time  I  had  my 
secret  joy  in  it,  and  even  yet  I  think  it  was  attempted 
in  a  way  which  was  not  false  or  wrong.  I  had  tried 
to  sketch  an  aspect  of  life  that  I  had  seen  and  known, 
and  that  was  very  well  indeed,  and  I  had  wrought  pa- 
tiently and  carefully  in  the  art  of  the  poor  little  affair. 

My  elder  brother,  for  whom  there  was  no  place  in 
the  office  where  I  worked,  had  found  one  in  a  store, 
and  he  beguiled  the  leisure  that  a  light  trade  left  on 
his  hands  by  reading  the  novels  of  Captain  Marryat. 
I  read  them  after  him  with  a  great  deal  of  amusement, 
but  without  the  passion  that  I  bestowed  upon  my 
favorite  authors.  I  believe  I  had  no  critical  reserves 
in  regard  to  them,  but  simply  they  did  not  take  my 
fancy.  Still,  we  had  great  fun  with  Japhet  in  Search 
of  a  Father,  and  with  Midshipman  Easy,  and  we  felt 
a  fine  psychical  shiver  in  the  darkling  moods  of  Snarle- 
yow  the  Dog-Fiend.  I  do  not  remember  even  the 
names  of  the  other  novels,  except  Jacob  Faithful, 
which  I  chanced  upon  a  few  years  ago  and  found  very 
hard  reading. 

We  children  who  were  used  to  the  free  range  of 
woods  and  fields  were  homesick  for  the  country  in  our 
narrow  city  yard,  and  I  associate  with  this  longing  the 


LIGHTER    FANCIES.  47 

Farmer  Boy  of  Bloomfield,  which  my  father  got  for 
me.  It  was  a  little  book  in  blue  cloth,  and  there  were 
some  mild  woodcuts  in  it.  I  read  it  with  a  tempered 
pleasure,  and  with  a  vague  resentment  of  its  trespass 
upon  Thomson's  ground  in  the  division  of  its  parts 
under  the  names  of  the  seasons.  I  do  not  know  why 
I  need  have  felt  this.  I  was  not  yet  very  fond  of 
Thomson.  I  really  liked  Bloomfield  better;  for  one 
thing,  his  poem  was  written  in  the  heroic  decasyllabics 
which  I  preferred  to  any  other  verse. 


IX. 

POPE. 

I  INFER  from  the  fact  of  this  preference  that  I  had 
already  begun  to  read  Pope,  and  that  I  must  have  read 
the  Deserted  Village  of  Goldsmith.  I  fancy,  also, 
that  I  must  by  this  time  have  read  the  Odyssey,  for 
the  Battle  of  the  Frogs  and  Mice  was  in  the  second 
volume,  and  it  took  me  so  much  that  I  paid  it  the 
tribute  of  a  bald  imitation  in  a  mock-heroic  epic  of  a 
cat  fight,  studied  from  the  cat  fights  in  our  back  yard, 
with  the  wonted  invocation  to  the  Muse,  and  the  ma- 
chinery of  partisan  gods  and  goddesses.  It  was  in 
some  hundreds  of  verses,  which  I  did  my  best  to  bal- 
ance as  Pope  did,  with  a  caesura  falling  in  the  middle 
of  the  line,  and  a  neat  antithesis  at  either  end. 

The  story  of  the  Odyssey  charmed  me,  of  course, 
and  I  had  moments  of  being  intimate  friends  with 
Ulysses,  but  I  was  passing  out  of  that  phase,  and  was 
coming  to  read  more  with  a  sense  of  the  author,  and 


POPE.  49 

less  with  a  sense  of  his  characters  as  real  persons; 
that  is,  I  was  growing  more  literary,  and  less  human. 
I  fell  in  love  with  Pope,  whose  life  I  read  with  an  ar- 
dor of  sympathy  which  I  am  afraid  he  hardly  merited. 
I  was  of  his  side  in  all  his  quarrels,  as  far  as  I  under- 
stood them,  and  if  I  did  not  understand  them  I  was 
of  his  side  anyway.  When  I  found  that  he  was  a 
Catholic  I  was  almost  ready  to  abjure  the  Protestant 
religion  for  his  sake ;  but  I  perceived  that  this  was 
not  necessary  when  I  came  to  know  that  most  of  his 
friends  were  Protestants.  If  the  truth  must  be  told, 
I  did  not  like  his  best  things  at  first,  but  long  re- 
mained chiefly  attached  to  his  rubbishing  pastorals, 
which  I  was  perpetually  imitating,  with  a  whole  ap- 
paratus of  swains  and  shepherdesses,  purling  brooks, 
enameled  meads,  rolling  years,  and  the  like. 

After  my  day's  work  at  the  case  I  toiled  the  even- 
ing away  at  my  boyish  literary  attempts,  forcing  my 
poor  invention  .in  that  unnatural  kind,  and  rubbing 
and  polishing  at  my  wretched  verses  till  they  did 
sometimes  take  on  an  effect,  which,  if  it  was  not  like 
Pope's,  was  like  none  of  mine.  With  all  my  pains  I 
do  not  think  I  ever  managed  to  bring  any  of  my  pas- 
torals to  a  satisfactory  close.  They  all  stopped  some- 
where about  half  way.  My  swains  could  not  think  of 
D 


50  MY   LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

anything  more  to  say,  and  the  merits  of  my  shepherd- 
esses remained  undecided.  To  this  day  I  do  not  know 
whether  in  any  given  instance  it  was  the  champion  of 
Chloe  or  of  Sylvia  that  carried  off  the  prize  for  his  fair, 
but  I  dare  say  it  does  not  much  matter.  I  am  sure 
that  I  produced  a  rhetoric  as  artificial  and  treated  of 
things  as  unreal  as  my  master  in  the  art,  and  I  am 
rather  glad  that  I  acquainted  myself  so  thoroughly 
with  a  mood  of  literature,  which,  whatever  we  may 
say  against  it,  seems  to  have  expressed  very  perfectly 
a  mood  of  civilization. 

The  severe  schooling  I  gave  myself  was  not  without 
its  immediate  use.  I  learned  how  to  choose  between 
words  after  a  study  of  their  fitness,  and  though  I 
often  employed  them  decoratively  and  with  no  vital 
sense  of  their  qualities,  still  in  mere  decoration  they 
had  to  be  chosen  intelligently,  and  after  some  thought 
about  their  structure  and  meaning.  I  could  not  imi- 
tate Pope  without  imitating  his  methods,  and  his 
method  was  to  the  last  degree  intelligent.  He  cer- 
tainly knew  what  he  was  doing,  and  although  I  did 
not  always  know  what  I  was  doing,  he  made  me  wish 
to  know,  and  ashamed  of  not  knowing.  There  are 
several  truer  poets  who  might  not  have  done  this ;  and 
after  all  the  modern  contempt  of  Pope,  he  seems  to  me 


POPE.  51 

to  have  been  at  least  one  of  the  great  masters,  if  not 
one  of  the  great  poets.  The  poor  man's  life  was  as 
weak  and  crooked  as  his  frail,  tormented  body,  but  he 
had  a  dauntless  spirit,  and  he  fought  his  way  against 
odds  that  mighkwell  have  appalled  a  stronger  nature. 
I  suppose  I  must  own  that  he  was  from  time  to  time 
a  snob,  and  from  time  to  time  a  liar,  but  I  believe  that 
he  loved  the  truth,  and  would  have  liked  always  to 
respect  himself  if  he  could.  He  violently  revolted, 
now  and  again,  from  the  abasement  to  which  he  forced 
himself,  and  he  always  bit  the  heel  that  trod  on  him, 
especially  if  it  was  a  very  high,  narrow  heel,  with  a 
clocked  stocking  and  a  hooped  skirt  above  it.  I  loved 
him  fondly  at  one  time,  and  afterwards  despised  him, 
but  now  I  am  not  sorry  for  the  love,  and  I  am  very 
sorry  for  the  despite.  I  humbly  own  a  vast  debt  to 
him,  not  the  least  part  of  which  is  the  perception  that 
he  is  a  model  of  ever  so  much  more  to  be  shunned 
than  to  be  followed  in  literature. 

He  was  the  first  of  the  writers  of  great  Anna's  time 
whom  I  knew,  and  he  made  me  ready  to  understand, 
if  he  did  not  make  me  understand  at  once,  the  order 
of  mind  and  life  which  he  belonged  to.  Thanks  to 
his  pastorals,  I  could  long  afterwards  enjoy  with  the 
double  sense  requisite  for  full  pleasure  in  them,  such 


52  MY    LITEBAEY   PASSIONS. 

divinely  excellent  artificialties  as  Tasso's  Aminta  and 
Guarini's  Pastor  Fido;  things  which  you  will  thor- 
oughly like  only  after  you  are  in  the  joke  of  thinking 
how  people  once  seriously  liked  them  as  high  exam- 
ples of  poetry. 

Of  course  I  read  other  things  of  Pope's  besides  his 
pastorals,  even  at  the  time  I  read  these  so  much.  I 
read,  or  not  very  easily  or  willingly  read  at,  his  Essay 
on  Man,  which  my  father  admired,  and  which  he 
probably  put  Pope's  works  into  my  hands  to  have  me 
read ;  and  I  read  the  Dunciad,  with  quite  a  furious  ar- 
dor in  the  tiresome  quarrels  it  celebrates,  and  an  inter- 
est in  its  machinery,  which  it  fatigues  me  to  think  of. 
But  it  was  only  a  few  years  ago  that  I  read  the  Rape 
of  the  Lock,  a  thing  perfect  of  its  kind,  whatever  we 
may  choose  to  think  of  the  kind.  Upon  the  whole  I 
think  much  better  of  the  kind  than  I  once  did,  though 
still  not  so  much  as  I  should  have  thought  if  I  had 
read  the  poem  when  the  fever  of  my  love  for  Pope 
was  at  the  highest. 

It  is  a  nice  question  how  far  one  is  helped  or  hurt 
by  one's  idealizations  of  historical  or  imaginary  char- 
acters, and  I  shall  not  try  to  answer  it  fully.  I  sup- 
pose that  if  I  once  cherished  such  a  passion  for  Pope 
personally  that  I  would  willingly  have  done  the  things 


POPE.  53 

that  he  did,  and  told  the  lies,  and  vented  the  malice, 
and  inflicted  the  cruelties  that  the  poor  soul  was  full 
of,  it  was  for  the  reason,  partly,  that  I  did  not  see 
these  things  as  they  were,  and  that  in  the  glamour  of 
his  talent  I  was  blind  to  all  but  the  virtues  of  his  de- 
fects, which  he  certainly  had,  and  partly  that  in  my 
love  of  him  I  could  not  take  sides  against  him,  even 
when  I  knew  him  to  be  wrong.  After  all,  I  fancy  not 
much  harm  comes  to  the  devoted  boy  from  his  enthu- 
siasms for  this  imperfect  hero  or  that.  In  my  own 
case  I  am  sure  that  I  distinguished  as  to  certain  sins 
in  my  idols.  I  could  not  cast  them  down  or  cease  to 
worship  them,  but  some  of  their  frailties  grieved  me 
and  put  me  to  secret  shame  for  them.  I  did  not  ex- 
cuse these  things  in  them,  or  try  to  believe  that  they 
were  less  evil  for  them  than  they  would  have  been  for 
less  people.  This  was  after  I  came  more  or  less  to 
the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil.  While  I  remained 
in  the  innocence  of  childhood  I  did  not  even  under- 
stand the  wrong.  When  I  realized  what  lives  some 
of  my  poets  had  led,  how  they  were  drunkards,  and 
swindlers,  and  unchaste,  and  untrue,  I  lamented  over 
them  with  a  sense  of  personal  disgrace  in  them,  and 
to  this  day  I  have  no  patience  with  that  code  of  the 
*world  which  relaxes  itself  in  behalf  of  the  brilliant  and 


54  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

gifted  offender ;  rather  he  should  suffer  more  blame. 
The  worst  of  the  literature  of  past  times,  before  an 
ethical  conscience  began  to  inform  it,  or  the  advance 
of  the  race  compelled  it  to  decency,  is  that  it  leaves 
the  mind  foul  with  filthy  images  and  base  thoughts ; 
but  what  I  have  been  trying  to  say  is  that  the  boy, 
unless  he  is  exceptionally  depraved  beforehand,  is 
saved  from  these  through  his  ignorance.  Still  I  wish 
they  were  not  there,  and  I  hope  the  time  will  come 
when  the  beast-man  will  be  so  far  subdued  and  tamed 
in  us  that  the  memory  of  him  in  literature  shall  be  left 
to  perish ;  that  what  is  lewd  and  ribald  in  the  great 
poets  shall  be  kept  out  of  such  editions  as  are  meant 
for  general  reading,  and  that  the  pedant-pride  which 
now  perpetuates  it  as  an  essential  part  of  those  poets 
shall  no  longer  have  its  way.  At  the  end  of  the  ends 
such  things  do  defile,  they  do  corrupt.  We  may  pal- 
liate them  or  excuse  them  for  this  reason  or  that,  but 
that  is  the  truth,  and  I  do  not  see  why  they  should 
not  be  dropped  from  literature,  as  they  were  long  ago 
dropped  from  the  talk  of  decent  people.  The  literary 
histories  might  keep  record  of  them,  but  it  is  loath- 
some to  think  of  those  heaps  of  ordure,  accumulated 
from  generation  to  generation,  and  carefully  passed 
down  from  age  to  age  as  something  precious  and  vital, 


POPE,  55 

and  not  justly  regarded  as  the  moral  offal  which  they 
are. 

During  the  winter  we  passed  at  Columbus  I  suppose 
that  my  father  read  things  aloud  to  us  after  his  old 
habit,  and  that  I  listened  with  the  rest.  I  have  a  dim 
notion  of  first  knowing  Thomson's  Castle  of  Indolence 
in  this  way,  but  I  was  getting  more  and  more  impa- 
tient of  having  things  read  to  me.  The  trouble  was 
that  I  caught  some  thought  or  image  from  the  text, 
and  that  my  fancy  remained  playing  with  that  while 
the  reading  went  on,  and  I  lost  the  rest.  But  I  think 
the  reading  was  less  in  every  way  than  it  had  been, 
because  his  work  was  exhausting  and  his  leisure  less. 
My  own  hours  in  the  printing-office  began  at  seven 
and  ended  at  six,  with  an  hour  at  noon  for  dinner, 
which  I  often  used  for  putting  down  such  verses  as 
had  come  to  me  during  the  morning.  As  soon  as 
supper  was  over  at  night  I  got  out  my  manuscripts, 
which  I  kept  in  great  disorder,  and  written  in  several 
different  hands  on  several  different  kinds  of  paper,  and 
sawed,  and  filed,  and  hammered  away  at  my  blessed 
Popean  heroics  till  nine,  when  I  went  regularly  to  bed, 
to  rise  again  at  five.  Sometimes  the  foreman  gave 
me  an  afternoon  off  on  Saturdays,  and  though  the 
days  were  long  the  work  was  not  always  constant,  and 


56  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

was  never  very  severe.  I  suspect  now  the  office  was 
not  so  prosperous  as  might  have  been  wished.  I  was 
shifted  from  place  to  place  in  it,  and  there  was  plenty 
of  time  for  my  day-dreams  over  the  distribution  of  my 
case.  I  was  very  fond  of  my  work,  though,  and  proud 
of  my  swiftness  and  skill  in  it.  Once  when  the  per- 
plexed foreman  could  not  think  of  any  task  to  set  me 
he  offered  me  a  holiday,  but  I  would  not  take  it,  so  I 
fancy  that  at  this  time  I  was  not  more  interested  in 
my  art  of  poetry  than  in  my  trade  of  printing.  What 
went  on  in  the  office  interested  me  as  much  as  the 
quarrels  of  the  Augustan  age  of  English  letters,  and  I 
made  much  more  record  of  it  in  the  crude  and  shape- 
less diary  which  I  kept,  partly  in  verse  and  partly  in 
prose,  but  always  of  a  distinctly  lower  literary  kind 
than  that  I  was  trying  otherwise  to  write. 

There  must  have  been  some  mention  in  it  of  the 
tremendous  combat  with  wet  sponges  I  saw  there  one 
day  between  two  of  the  boys  who  hurled  them  back 
and  forth  at  each  other.  This  amiable  fray,  carried 
on  during  the  foreman's  absence,  forced  upon  my  no- 
tice for  the  first  time  the  boy  who  has  come  to  be  a 
name  well-known  in  literature.  I  admired  his  vigor 
as  a  combatant,  but  I  never  spoke  to  him  at  that  time, 
and  I  never  dreamed  that  he,  too,  was  effervescing 


POPE.  57 

with  verse,  probably  as  fiercely  as  myself.  Six  or 
seven  years  later  we  met  again,  when  we  had  both 
become  journalists,  and  had  both  had  poems  accepted 
by  Mr.  Lowell  for  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  then  we 
formed  a  literary  friendship  which  eventuated  in  the 
joint  publication  of  a  volume  of  verse.  The  Poems  of 
Two  Friends  became  instantly  and  lastingly  unknown 
to  fame ;  the  West  waited,  as  it  always  does,  to  hear 
what  the  East  should  say ;  the  East  said  nothing,  and 
two-thirds  of  the  small  edition  of  five  hundred  came 
back  upon  the  publisher's  hands.  I  imagine  these 
copies  were  "  ground  up  "  in  the  manner  of  worthless 
stock,  for  I  saw  a  single  example  of  the  book  quoted 
the  other  day  in  a  book-seller's  catalogue  at  ten  dollars, 
and  I  infer  that  it  is  so  rare  as  to  be  prized  at  least 
for  its  rarity.  It  was  a  very  pretty  little  book,  printed 
on  tinted  paper  then  called  "  blush,"  in  the  trade,  and 
it  was  manufactured  in  the  same  office  where  we  had 
once  been  boys  together,  unknown  to  each  other. 
Another  boy  of  that  time  had  by  this  time  become 
foreman  in  the  office,  and  he  was  very  severe  with  us 
about  the  proofs,  and  sent  us  hurting  messages  on  the 
margin.  Perhaps  he  thought  we  might  be  going  to 
take  on  airs,  and  perhaps  we  might  have  taken  on  airs 
if  the  fate  of  our  book  had  been  different.  As  it  was 


58  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

I  really  think  we  behaved  with  sufficient  meekness, 
and  after  thirty  four  or  five  years  for  reflection  I  am 
still  of  a  very  modest  mind  about  my  share  of  the 
book,  in  spite  of  the  price  it  bears  in  the  book-seller's 
catalogue.  But  I  have  steadily  grown  in  liking  for  my 
friend's  share  in  it,  and  I  think  that  there  is  at  present 
no  American  of  twenty-three  writing  verse  of  so  good 
a  quality,  with  an  ideal  so  pure  and  high,  and  from  an 
impulse  so  authentic  as  John  J.  Piatt's  were  then.  He 
already  knew  how  to  breathe  into  his  glowing  rhyme 
the  very  spirit  of  the  region  where  we  were  both  na- 
tive, and  in  him  the  Middle  West  has  its  true  poet, 
who  was  much  more  than  its  poet,  who  had  a  rich  and 
tender  imagination,  a  lovely  sense  of  color,  and  a  touch 
even  then  securely  and  fully  his  own.  I  was  reading 
over  his  poems  in  that  poor  little  book  a  few  days  ago, 
and  wondering  with  shame  and  contrition  that  I  had 
not  at  once  known  their  incomparable  superiority  to 
mine.  But  I  used  then  and  for  long  afterward  to  tax 
him  with  obscurity,  not  knowing  that  my  own  want  of 
simplicity  and  directness  was  to  blame  for  that  effect. 
My  reading  from  the  first  was  such  as  to  enamour 
me  of  clearness,  of  definiteness ;  anything  left  in  the 
vague  was  intolerable  to  me ;  but  my  long  subjection 
to  Pope,  while  it  was  useful  in  other  ways,  made  me 


POPE.  59 

so  strictly  literary  in  my  point  of  view  that  sometimes 
I  could  not  see  what  was,  if  more  naturally  approached 
and  without  any  technical  preoccupation,  perfectly 
transparent.  It  remained  for  another  great  passion, 
perhaps  the  greatest  of  my  life,  to  fuse  these  gyves  in 
which  I  was  trying  so  hard  to  dance,  and  free  me  for- 
ever from  the  bonds  which  I  had  spent  so  much  time 
and  trouble  to  involve  myself  in.  But  I  was  not  to 
know  that  passion  for  five  or  six  years  yet,  and  in  the 
meantime  I  kept  on  as  I  had  been  going,  and  worked 
out  my  deliverance  in  the  predestined  way.  What  I 
liked  then  was  regularity,  uniformity,  exactness.  I 
did  not  conceive  of  literature  as  the  expression  of 
life,  and  I  could  not  imagine  that  it  ought  to  be  desul- 
tory, mutable  and  unfixed,  even  if  at  the  risk  of  some 
vagueness. 


VARIOUS  PREFERENCES. 

MY  father  was  very  fond  of  Byron,  and  I  must  be- 
fore this  have  known  that  his  poems  were  in  our  book- 
case. While  we  were  still  in  Columbus  I  began  to 
read  them,  but  I  did  not  read  so  much  of  them  as 
could  have  helped  me  to  a  truer  and  freer  ideal.  I 
read  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers,  and  I  liked 
its  vulgar  music  and  its  heavy-handed  sarcasm.  These 
would,  perhaps,  have  fascinated  any  boy,  but  I  had 
such  a  fanaticism  for  methodical  verse  that  any  varia- 
tion from  the  octosyllabic  and  decasyllabic  couplets 
was  painful  to  me.  The  Spencerian  stanza,  with  its 
rich  variety  of  movement  and  its  harmonious  closes, 
long  shut  Childe  Harold  from  me,  and  whenever  I 
found  a  poem  in  any  book  which  did  not  rhyme  its 
second  line  with  its  first  I  read  it  unwillingly  or  not 
at  all. 


VARIOUS    PREFERENCES.  61 

This  craze  could  not  last,  of  course,  but  it  lasted 
beyond  our  stay  in  Columbus,  which  ended  with  the 
winter,  when  the  Legislature  adjourned,  and  my  fath- 
er's employment  ceased.  He  tried  to  find  some  edi- 
torial work  on  the  paper  which  had  printed  his  reports, 
but  every  place  was  full,  and  it  was  hopeless  to  dream 
of  getting  a  proprietary  interest  in  it.  We  had  noth- 
ing, and  we  must  seek  a  chance  where  something  be- 
sides money  would  avail  us.  This  offered  itself  in 
the  village  of  Ashtabula,  in  the  northeastern  part  of 
the  State,  and  there  we  all  found  ourselves  one  moon- 
light night  of  early  summer.  The  Lake  Shore  Railroad 
then  ended  at  Ashtabula,  in  a  bank  of  sand,  and  my 
elder  brother  and  I  walked  up  from  the  station,  while 
the  rest  of  the  family,  which  pretty  well  filled  the 
omnibus,  rode.  We  had  been  very  happy  at  Colum- 
bus, as  we  were  apt  to  be  anywhere,  but  none  of  us 
liked  the  narrowness  of  city  streets,  even  so  near  to 
the  woods  as  those  were,  and  we  were  eager  for  the 
country  again.  We  had  always  lived  hitherto  in  large 
towns,  except  for  that  year  at  the  Mills,  and  we  were 
eager  to  see  what  a  village  was  like,  especially  a  village 
peopled  wholly  by  Yankees,  as  our  father  had  reported 
it.  I  must  own  that  we  found  it  far  prettier  than 
anything  we  had  known  in  Southern  Ohio,  which  we 


62  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

were  so  fond  of  and  so  loath  to  leave,  and  as  I  look 
back  it  still  seems  to  me  one  of  the  prettiest  little 
places  I  have  ever  known,  with  its  white  wooden 
houses,  glimmering  in  the  dark  of  its  elms  and  maples, 
and  their  silent  gardens  beside  each,  and  the  silent, 
grass-bordered,  sandy  streets  between  them.  The  ho- 
tel, where  we  rejoined  our  family,  lurked  behind  a 
group  of  lofty  elms,  and  we  drank  at  the  town  pump 
before  it  just  for  the  pleasure  of  pumping  it. 

The  village  was  all  that  we  could  have  imagined  of 
simply  and  sweetly  romantic  in  the  moonlight,  and 
when  the  day  came  it  did  not  rob  it  of  its  charm.  It 
was  as  lovely  in  my  eyes  as  the  loveliest  village  of  the 
plain,  and  it  had  the  advantage  of  realizing  the  De- 
serted Village  without  being  deserted. 


XL 

UNCLE  TOM'S  CABIN. 

THE  book  that  moved  me  most,  in  our  stay  of  six 
months  at  Ashtabula,  was  then  beginning  to  move  the 
whole  world  more  than  any  other  book  has  moved  it. 
I  read  it  as  it  came  out  week  after  week  in  the  old 
National  Era,  and  I  broke  my  heart  over  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,  as  every  one  else  did.  Yet  I  cannot  say  that 
it  was  a  passion  of  mine  like  Don  Quixote,  or  the 
other  books  that  I  have  loved  intensely.  I  felt  its 
greatness  when  I  read  it  first,  and  as  often  as  I  have 
read  it  since,  I  have  seen  more  and  more  clearly  that 
it  is  a  very  great  novel.  With  certain  obvious  lapses 
in  its  art,  and  with  an  art  that  is  at  its  best  very  sim- 
ple, and  perhaps  primitive,  the  book  is  still  a  work  of 
art.  I  knew  this,  in  a  measure  then,  as  I  know  it 
now,  and  yet  neither  the  literary  pride  I  was  beginning 
to  have  in  the  perception  of  such  things,  nor  the  pow- 


64  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

erf ul  appeal  it  made  to  my  sympathies,  sufficed  to 
impassion  me  of  it.  I  could  not  say  why  this  was  so. 
Why  does  the  young  man's  fancy,  when  it  lightly  turns 
to  thoughts  of  love,  turn  this  way  and  not  that? 
There  seems  no  more  reason  for  one  than  for  the 
other. 

Instead  of  remaining  steeped  to  the  lips  in  the  strong 
interest  of  what  is  still  perhaps  our  chief  fiction,  I 
shed  my  tribute  of  tears,  and  went  on  my  way.  I  did 
not  try  to  write  a  story  of  slavery,  as  I  might  very 
well  have  done ;  I  did  not  imitate  either  the  make  or 
the  manner  of  Mrs.  Stowe's  romance;  I  kept  on  at 
my  imitation  of  Pope's  pastorals,  which  I  dare  say  I 
thought  much  finer,  and  worthier  the  powers  of  such 
a  poet  as  I  meant  to  be.  I  did  this,  as  I  must  have 
felt  then,  at  some  personal  risk  of  a  supernatural  kind, 
for  my  studies  were  apt  to  be  prolonged  into  the 
night  after  the  rest  of  the  family  had  gone  to  bed, 
and  a  certain  ghost,  which  I  had  every  reason  to  fear, 
might  very  well  have  visited  the  small  room  given  me 
to  write  in.  There  was  a  story,  which  I  shrank  from 
verifying,  that  a  former  inmate  of  our  house  had  hung 
himself  in  it,  but  I  do  not  know  to  this  day  whether  it 
was  true  or  not.  The  doubt  did  not  prevent  him  from 
dangling  at  the  door-post,  in  my  consciousness,  and 


UNCLE    TOM'S    CABIN.  65 

many  a  time  I  shunned  the  sight  of  this  problematical 
suicide  by  keeping  my  eyes  fastened  on  the  book  be- 
fore me.  It  was  a  very  simple  device,  but  perfectly 
effective,  as  I  think  any  one  will  find  who  employs 
it  in  like  circumstances ;  and  I  would  really  like  to  com- 
mend it  to  growing  boys  troubled  as  I  was  then. 

I  never  heard  who  the  poor  soul  was,  or  why  he 
took  himself  out  of  the  world,  if  he  really  did  so,  or 
if  he  ever  was  in  it ;  but  I  am  sure  that  my  passion  for 
Pope,  and  my  purpose  of  writing  pastorals  must  have 
been  powerful  indeed  to  carry  me  through  dangers  of 
that  kind.  I  suspect  that  the  strongest  proof  of  their 
existence  was  the  gloomy  and  ruinous  look  of  the 
house,  which  was  one  of  the  oldest  in  the  village,  and 
the  only  one  that  was  for  rent,  there.  We  went  into 
it  because  we  must,  and  we  were  to  leave  it  as  soon 
as  we  could  find  a  better.  But  before  this  happened 
we  left  Ashtabula,  and  I  parted  with  one  of  the  few 
possibilities  I  have  enjoyed  of  seeing  a  ghost  on  his 
own  ground,  as  it  were. 

I  was  not  sorry,  for  I  believe  I  never  went  in  or 
came  out  of  the  place,  by  day  or  by  night,  without  a 
shudder,  more  or  less  secret;  and  at  least,  now,  we 

should  be  able  to  get  another  house, 
E 


XII. 


OSSIAN. 

VERY  likely  the  reading  of  Ossian  had  something 
to  do  with  my  morbid  anxieties.  I  had  read  Byron's 
imitation  of  him  before  that,  and  admired  it  prodig- 
iously, and  when  my  father  got  me  the  book — as  usu- 
al I  did  not  know  where  or  how  he  got  it — not  all  the 
tall  forms  that  moved  before  the  eyes  of  haunted 
bards  in  the  dusky  vale  of  autumn  could  have  kept  me 
from  it.  There  were  certain  outline  illustrations  in  it, 
which  were  very  good  in  the  cold  Flaxman  manner, 
and  helped  largely  to  heighten  the  fascination  of  the 
poems  for  me.  They  did  not  supplant  the  pastorals 
of  Pope  in  my  affections,  and  they  were  never  the 
grand  passion  with  me  that  Pope's  poems  had  been. 

I  began  at  once  to  make  my  imitations  of  Ossian, 
and  I  dare  say  they  were  not  windier  and  mistier  than 
the  original.  At  the  same  time  I  read  the  literature 


OSSIAN.  67 

of  the  subject,  and  gave  the  pretensions  of  Macpher- 
son  an  unquestioning  faith.  I  should  have  made  very 
short  work  of  any  one  who  had  impugned  the  authen- 
ticity of  the  poems,  but  happily  there  was  no  one  who 
held  the  contrary  opinion  in  that  village,  so  far  as  I 
knew,  or  who  cared  for  Ossian,  or  had  even  heard  of 
him.  This  saved  me  a  great  deal  of  heated  contro- 
versy with  my  contemporaries,  but  I  had  it  out  in 
many  angry  reveries  with  Dr.  Johnson  and  others, 
who  had  dared  to  say  in  their  time  that  the  poems  of 
Ossian  were  not  genuine  lays  of  the  Gaelic  bard, 
handed  down  from  father  to  son,  and  taken  from  the 
lips  of  old  women  in  Highland  huts,  as  Macpherson 
claimed. 

In  fact  I  lived  over  in  my  small  way  the  epoch  of 
the  eighteenth  century  in  which  these  curious  frauds 
found  polite  acceptance  all  over  Europe,  and  I  think 
yet  that  they  were  really  worthier  of  acceptance  than 
most  of  the  artificialities  that  then  passed  for  poetry. 
There  was  a  light  of  nature  in  them,  and  this  must 
have  been  what  pleased  me,  so  long  shut  up  to  the 
studio-work  of  Pope.  But  strangely  enough  I  did  not 
falter  in  my  allegiance  to  him,  or  realize  that  here  in 
this  free  form  was  a  deliverance,  if  I  liked,  from  the 
fetters  and  manacles  which  I  had  been  at  so  much 


68  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

pains  to  fit  myself  with.  Probably  nothing  would  then 
have  persuaded  me  to  put  them  off,  permanently,  or  to 
do  more  than  lay  them  aside  for  the  moment  while  I 
tried  that  new  stop  and  that  new  step. 

I  think  that  even  then  I  had  an  instinctive  doubt 
whether  formlessness  was  really  better  than  formality. 
Something,  it  seems  to  me,  may  be  contained  and 
kept  alive  in  formality,  but  in  formlessness  everything 
spills  and  w.astes  away.  This  is  what  I  find  the  fatal 
defect  of  our  American  Ossian,  Walt  Whitman,  whose 
way  is  where  artistic  madness  lies.  He  had  great 
moments,  beautiful  and  noble  thoughts,  generous  as- 
pirations, and  a  heart  wide  and  warm  enough  for  the 
whole  race,  but  he  had  no  bounds,  no  shape ;  he  was 
as  liberal  as  the  casing  air,  but  he  was  often  as  vague 
and  intangible.  I  cannot  say  how  long  my  passion 
for  Ossian  lasted,  but  not  long,  I  fancy,  for  I  cannot 
find  any  trace  of  it  in  the  time  following  our  removal 
from  Ashtabula  to  the  county  seat  at  Jefferson.  I 
kept  on  with  Pope,  I  kept  on  with  Cervantes,  I  kept 
on  with  Irving,  but  I  suppose  there  was  really  not 
substance  enough  in  Ossian  to  feed  my  passion,  and 
it  died  of  inanition. 


XIII. 

SHAKESPEARE. 

THE  establishment  of  our  paper  in  the  village  where 
there  had  been  none  before,  and  its  enlargement  from 
four  to  eight  pages,  were  events  so  filling  that  they 
left  little  room  for  any  other  excitement  but  that  of 
getting  acquainted  with  the  young  people  of  the  vil- 
lage, and  going  to  parties,  and  sleigh  rides,  and  walks, 
and  drives,  and  picnics,  and  dances,  and  all  the  other 
pleasures  which  that  community  seemed  to  indulge 
beyond  any  other  we  had  known.  The  village  was 
smaller  than  the  one  we  had  just  left,  but  it  was  by 
no  means  less  lively,  and  I  think  that  for  its  size  and 
time  and  place  it  had  an  uncommon  share  of  what  has 
since  been  called  culture.  The  intellectual  experience 
of  the  people  was  mainly  theological  and  political,  as 
it  was  everywhere  in  that  day,  but  there  were  several 
among  them  who  had  a  real  love  for  books,  and  when 


70  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

they  met  at  the  druggist's,  as  they  did  every  night,  to 
dispute  of  the  inspiration  of  the  scriptures  and  the 
principles  of  the  Free  Soil  party,  the  talk  sometimes 
turned  upon  the  respective  merits  of  Dickens  and 
Thackeray,  Gibbon  and  Macaulay,  Wordsworth  and 
Byron.  There  were  law  students  who  read  Noctes 
Ambrosianse,  the  Age  of  Reason,  and  Bailey's  Festus, 
as  well  as  Blackstone's  Commentaries;,  and  there  was 
a  public  library  in  that  village  of  six  hundred  people, 
small  but  very  well  selected,  which  was  kept  in  one  of 
the  lawyers'  offices,  and  was  free  to  all.  It  seems  to 
me  now  that  the  people  met  there  oftener  than  they 
do  in  most  country  places,  and  rubbed  their  wits  to- 
gether more,  but  this  may  be  one  of  those  pleasing 
illusions  of  memory  which  men  in  later  life  are  sub- 
ject to. 

I  insist  upon  nothing,  but  certainly  the  air  was 
friendlier  to  the  tastes  I  had  formed  than  any  I  had 
yet  known,  and  I  found  a  wider  if  not  deeper  sympa- 
thy with  them.  There  was  one  of  our  printers  who 
liked  books,  and  we  went  through  Don  Quixote  to- 
gether again,  and  through  the  Conquest  of  Granada, 
and  we  began  to  read  other  things  of  Irving's.  There 
was  a  very  good  little  stock  of  books  at  the  village  drug- 
store, and  among  those  that  began  to  come  into  my 


SHAKESPEARE.  71 

hands  were  the  poems  of  Dr.  Holmes,  stray  volumes 
of  De  Quincey,  and  here  and  there  minor  works  of 
Thackeray's.  I  believe  I  had  no  money  to  buy  them, 
but  there  was  an  open  account,  or  a  comity,  between 
the  printer  and  the  bookseller,  and  I  must  have  been 
allowed  a  certain  discretion  in  regard  to  getting  books. 

Still,  I  do  not  think  I  went  far  in  the  more  modern 
authors,  or  gave  my  heart  to  any  of  them.  Suddenly, 
it  was  now  given  to  Shakespeare,  without  notice  or 
reason,  that  I  can  recall,  except  that  my  friend  liked 
him  too,  and  that  we  found  it  a  double  pleasure  to 
read  him  together.  Printers  in  the  old-time  offices 
were  always  spouting  Shakespeare  more  or  less,  and 
I  suppose  I  could  not  have  kept  away  from  him  much 
longer  in  the  nature  of  things.  I  cannot  fix  the  time 
or  place  when  my  friend  and  I  began  to  read  him,  but 
it  was  in  the  fine  print  of  that  unhallowed  edition  of 
ours,  and  presently  we  had  great  lengths  of  him  by 
heart,  out  of  Hamlet,  out  of  the  Tempest,  out  of  Mac- 
beth, out  of  Richard  III.,  out  of  Midsummer-Night's 
Dream,  out  of  the  Comedy  of  Errors,  out  of  Julius 
Caesar,  out  of  Measure  for  Measure,  out  of  Romeo  and 
Juliet,  out  of  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona. 

These  were  the  plays  that  we  loved,  and  must  have 
read  in  common,  or  at  least  at  the  same  time:  but 


72  MY   LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

others  that  I  more  especially  liked  were  the  Histories, 
and  among  them  particularly  the  Henrys,  where  Fal- 
staff  appeared.  This  gross  and  palpable  reprobate 
greatly  took  my  fancy.  I  delighted  in  him  immensely, 
and  in  his  comrades,  Pistol,  and  Bardolph,  and  Nym. 
I  could  not  read  of  his  death  without  emotion,  and  it 
was  a  personal  pang  to  me  when  the  prince,  crowned 
king,  denied  him :  blackguard  for  blackguard,  I  still 
think  the  prince  the  worse  blackguard.  Perhaps  I 
flatter  myself,  but  I  believe  that  even  then,  as  a  boy 
of  sixteen,  I  fully  conceived  of  Falstaff  s  character, 
and  entered  into  the  author's  wonderfully  humorous 
conception  of  him.  There  is  no  such  perfect  concep- 
tion of  the  selfish  sensualist  in  literature,  and  the  con- 
ception is  all  the  more  perfect  because  of  the  wit  that 
lights  up  the  vice  of  Falstaff,  a  cold  light  without  ten- 
derness, for  he  was  not  a  good  fellow,  though  a  merry 
companion.  I  am  not  sure  but  I  should  put  him  be- 
side Hamlet,  and  on  the  same  level,  for  the  merit  of 
his  artistic  completeness,  and  at  one  time  I  much  pre- 
ferred him,  or  at  least  his  humor. 

As  to  Falstaff  personally,  or  his  like,  I  was  rather 
fastidious,  and  would  not  have  made  friends  with  him 
in  the  flesh,  much  or  little.  I  reveled  in  all  his  ap- 
pearances in  the  Histories,  and  I  tried  to  be  as  happy 


SHAKESPEARE.  73 

where  a  factitious  and  perfunctory  Falstaff  comes  to 
life  again  in  the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  though  at 
the  bottom  of  my  heart  I  felt  the  difference.  I  began 
to  make  my  imitations  of  Shakespeare,  and  I  wrote 
out  passages  where  Falstaff  and  Pistol  and  Bardolph 
talked  together,  in  that  Ercles  vein  which  is  so  easily 
caught.  This  was  after  a  year  or  two  of  the  irregujar 
and  interrupted  acquaintance  with  the  author  which 
has  been  my  mode  of  friendship  with  all  the  authors 
1  have  loved.  My  worship  of  Shakespeare  went  to 
heights  and  lengths  that  it  had  reached  with  no  earlier 
idol,  and  there  was  a  supreme  moment,  once,  when  I 
found  myself  saying  that  the  creation  of  Shakespeare 
was  as  great  as  the  creation  of  a  planet. 

There  ought  certainly  to  be  some  bound  beyond 
which  the  cult  of  favorite  authors  should  not  be  suf- 
fered to  go.  I  should  keep  well  within  the  limit  of 
that  early  excess  now,  and  should  not  liken  the  crea- 
tion of  Shakespeare  to  the  creation  of  any  heavenly 
body  bigger,  say,  than  one  of  the  nameless  asteroids 
that  revolve  between  Mars  and  Jupiter.  Even  this  I 
do  not  feel  to  be  a  true  means  of  comparison,  and  I 
think  that  in  the  case  of  all  great  men  we  like  to  let 
our  wonder  mount  and  mount,  till  it  leaves  the  truth 
behind,  and  honesty  is  pretty  much  cast  out  for  bal- 


74  MY   LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

last.  A  wise  criticism  will  no  more  magnify  Shakes- 
peare because  he  is  already  great  than  it  will  magnify 
any  less  man.  But  we  are  loaded  down  with  the  re- 
sponsibility of  finding  him  all  we  have  been  told  he 
is,  and  we  must  do  this  or  suspect  ourselves  of  a  want 
of  taste,  a  want  of  sensibility.  At  the  same  time,  we 
may  really  be  honester  than  those  who  have  led  us 
to  expect  this  or  that  of  him,  and  more  truly  his 
friends.  I  wish  the  time  might  come  when  we  could 
read  Shakespeare,  and  Dante,  and  Homer,  as  sincerely 
and  as  fairly  as  we  read  any  new  book  by  the  least 
known  of  our  contemporaries.  The  course  of  criticism 
is  toward  this,  but  when  I  began  to  read  Shakespeare 
I  should  not  have  ventured  to  think  that  he  was  not 
at  every  moment  great.  I  should  no  more  have 
thought  of  questioning  the  poetry  of  any  passage  in 
him  than  of  questioning  the  proofs  of  holy  writ.  All 
the  same,  I  knew  very  well  that  much  which  I  read 
was  really  poor  stuff,  and  the  persons  and  positions 
were  often  preposterous.  It  is  a  great  pity  that  the 
ardent  youth  should  not  be  permitted  and  even  en- 
couraged to  say  this  to  himself,  instead  of  falling 
slavishly  before  a  great  author  and  accepting  him  at 
all  points  as  infallible.  Shakespeare  is  fine  enough 
and  great  enough  when  all  the  possible  detractions  are 


SHAKESPEARE.  75 

made,  and  I  have  no  fear  of  saying  now"  that  he  would 
be  finer  and  greater  for  the  loss  of  half  his  work, 
though  if  I  had  heard  any  one  say  such  a  thing  then 
I  should  have  held  him  as  little  better  than  one  of  the 
wicked. 

Upon  the  whole  it  was  well  that  I  had  not  found  my 
way  to  Shakespeare  earlier,  though  it  is  rather  strange 
that  I  had  not.  I  knew  him  on  the  stage  in  most  of 
the  plays  that  used  to  be  given.  I  had  shared  the 
conscience  of  Macbeth,  the  passion  of  Othello,  the 
doubt  of  Hamlet;  many  times,  in  my  natural  affinity 
for  villains,  I  had  mocked  and  suffered  with  Richard 
III. 

Probably  no  dramatist  ever  needed  the  stage  less, 
and  none  ever  brought  more  to  it.  There  have  been  few 
joys  for  me  in  life  comparable  to  that  of  seeing  the 
curtain  rise  on  Hamlet,  and  hearing  the  guards  begin 
to  talk  about  the  ghost ;  and  yet  how  fully  this  joy 
imparts  itself  without  any  material  embodiment !  It 
is  the  same  in  the  whole  range  of  his  plays:  they  fill 
the  scene,  but  if  there  is  no  scene  they  fill  the  soul. 
They  are  neither  worse  nor  better  because  of  the.  thea- 
tre. They  are  so  great  that  it  cannot  hamper  them  ; 
they  are  so  vital  that  they  enlarge  it  to  their  own  pro- 
portions and  endue  it  with  something  of  their  own 


76  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

living  force.  They  make  it  the  size  of  life,  and  yet 
they  retire  it  so  wholly  that  you  think  no  more  of  it 
than  you  think  of  the  physiognomy  of  one  who  talks 
importantly  to  you.  I  have  heard  people  say  that  they 
would  rather  not  see  Shakespeare  played  than  to  see 
him  played  ill,  but  I  cannot  agree  with  them.  He  can 
better  afford  to  be  played  ill  than  any  other  man  that 
ever  wrote.  Whoever  is  on  the  stage  it  is  always 
Shakespeare  who  is  speaking  to  me,  and  perhaps  this 
is  the  reason  why  in  the  past  I  can  trace  no  discrep- 
ancy between  reading  his  plays  and  seeing  them. 

The  effect  is  so  equal  from  either  experience  that  I 
am  not  sure  as  to  some  plays  whether  I  read  them  or 
saw  them  first,  though  as  to  most  of  them  I  am  aware 
that  I  never  saw  them  at  all ;  and  if  the  whole  truth 
must  be  told  there  is  still  one  of  his  plays  that  I  have 
not  read,  and  I  believe  it  is  esteemed  one  of  his  great- 
est. There  are  several,  with  all  my  reading  of  others, 
that  1  had  not  read  till  within  a  few  years ;  and  I  do 
not  think  I  should  have  lost  much  if  I  had  never  read 
Pericles  and  Winter's  Tale. 

In  .those  early  days  I  had  no  philosophized  prefer- 
ence for  reality  in  literature,  and  I  dare  say  if  I  had 
been  asked,  I  should  have  said  that  the  plays  of 
Shakespeare  where  reality  is  least  felt  were  the  most 


SHAKESPEAEE.  77 

imaginative ;  that  is  the  belief  of  the  puerile  critics 
still ;  but  I  suppose  it  was  my  instinctive  liking  for 
reality  that  made  the  great  Histories  so  delightful  to 
me,  and  that  rendered  Macbeth  and  Hamlet  vital  in 
their  very  ghosts  and  witches.  There  I  found  a  world 
appreciable  to  experience,  a  world  inexpressibly  vaster 
and  grander  than  the  poor  little  affair  that  I  had  only 
known  a  small  obscure  corner  of,  and  yet  of  one  qual- 
ity with  it,  so  that  I  could  be  as  much  at  home  and  cit- 
izen in  it  as  where  I  actually  lived.  There  I  found 
joy  and  sorrow  mixed,  and  nothing  abstract  or  typical, 
but  everything  standing  for  itself,  and  not  for  some 
other  thing.  Then,  I  suppose  it  was  the  interfusion  of 
humor  through  so  much  of  it,  that  made  it  all  precious 
and  friendly.  I  think  I  had  a  native  love  of  laughing, 
which  was  fostered  in  me  by  my  father's  way  of  look- 
ing at  life,  and  had  certainly  been  flattered  by  my  in- 
timacy with  Cervantes ;  but  whether  this  was  so  or  not, 
I  know  that  I  liked  best  and  felt  deepest  those  plays 
and  passages  in  Shakespeare  where  the  alliance  of  the 
tragic  and  the  comic  was  closest.  Perhaps  in  a  time 
when  self-consciousness  is  so  widespread,  it  is  the 
only  thing  that  saves  us  from  ourselves.  I  am  sure 
that  without  it  I  should  not  have  been  naturalized  to 
that  world  of  Shakespeare's  Histories,  where  I  used  to 


78  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

spend  so  much  of  my  leisure,  with  such  a  sense  of 
his  own  intimate  companionship  there  as  I  had  no- 
where else.  I  felt  that  he  most  somehow  like  my  be- 
ing in  the  joke  of  it  all,  and  that  in  his  great  heart  he 
had  room  for  a  boy  willing  absolutely  to  lose  himself 
in  him,  and  be  as  one  of  his  creations. 

It  was  the  time  of  life  with  me  when  a  boy  begins 
to  be  in  love  with  the  pretty  faces  that  then  peopled 
this  world  so  thickly,  and  I  did  not  fail  to  fall  in  love 
with  the  ladies  of  that  Shakespeare-world  where  I 
lived  equally.  I  cannot  tell  whether  it  was  because  I 
found  them  like  my  ideals  here,  of  whether  my  ideals 
acquired  merit  because  of  their  likeness  to  the  realities 
there ;  they  appeared  to  be  all  of  one  degree  of  en- 
chanting loveliness ;  but  upon  the  whole  I  must  have 
preferred  them  in  the  plays,  because  it  was  so  much 
easier  to  get  on  with  them  there ;  I  was  always  much 
better  dressed  there ;  I  was  vastly  handsomer ;  I  was 
not  bashful  or  afraid,  and  I  had  some  defects  of  these 
advantages  to  contend  with  here. 

That  friend  of  mine,  the  printer  whom  I  have  men- 
tioned, was  one  with  me  in  a  sense  of  the  Shakes- 
pearean humor,  and  he  dwelt  with  me  in  the  sort  of 
double  being  I  had  in  those  two  worlds.  We  took  the 
book  into  the  woods  at  the  ends  of  the  long  summer 


SHAKESPEARE.  79 

afternoons  that  remained  to  us  when  we  had  finished 
our  work,  and  on  the  shining  Sundays  of  the  warm, 
late  spring,  the  early,  warm  autumn,  and  we  read  it 
there  on  grassy  slopes  or  heaps  of  fallen  leaves;  so 
that  much  of  the  poetry  is  mixed  for  me  with  a  rapt- 
urous sense  of  the  out-door  beauty  of  this  lovely  nat- 
ural world.  We  read  turn  about,  one  taking  the  story 
up  as  the  other  tired,  and  as  we  read  the  drama  played 
itself  under  the  open  sky  and  in  the  free  air  with  such 
orchestral  effects  as  the  soughing  woods,  or  some  rip- 
pling stream  afforded.  It  was  not  interrupted  when 
a  squirrel  dropped  a  nut  on  us  from  the  top  of  a  tall 
hickory ;  and  the  plaint  of  a  meadow-lark  prolonged 
itself  with  unbroken  sweetness  from  one  world  to  the 
other. 

But  I  think  it  takes  two  to  read  in  the  open  air. 
The  pressure  of  walls  is  wanted  to  keep  the  mind  with- 
in itself  when  one  reads  alone ;  otherwise  it  wanders 
and  disperses  itself  through  nature.  When  my  friend 
left  us  for  want  of  work  in  the  office,  or  from  the  va- 
garious impulse  which  is  so  strong  in  our  craft,  I  took 
my  Shakespeare  no  longer  to  the  woods  and  fields, 
but  pored  upon  him  mostly  by  night,  in  the  narrow 
little  space  which  I  had  for  my  study,  under  the  stairs 
at  home.  There  was  a  desk  pushed  back  against  the 


80  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

wall,  which  the  irregular  ceiling  sloped  down  to  meet 
behind  it,  and  at  my  left  was  a  window,  which  gave  a 
good  light  on  the  writing-leaf  of  my  desk.  This  was 
my  workshop  for  six  or  seven  years,  and  it  was  not  at 
all  a  bad  one ;  I  have  had  many  since  that  were  not  so 
much  to  the  purpose ;  and  though  I  would  not  live  my 
life  over,  I  would  willingly  enough  have  that  little 
study  mine  again.  But  it  is  gone  as  utterly  as  the 
faces  and  voices  that  made  home  around  it,  and  that 
I  was  fierce  to  shut  out  of  it,  so  that  no  sound  or  sight 
should  molest  me  in  the  pursuit  of  the  end  which  I 
sought  gropingly,  blindly,  with  very  little  hope,  but 
with  an  intense  ambition,  and  a  courage  that  gave  way 
under  no  burden,  before  no  obstacle.  Long  ago 
changes  were  made  in  the  low,  rambling  house  which 
threw  my  little  closet  into  a  larger  room ;  but  this  was 
not  until  after  I  had  left  it  many  years ;  and  as  long 
as  I  remained  a  part  of  that  dear  and  simple  home  it 
was  my  place  to  read,  to  write,  to  muse,  to  dream. 

I  sometimes  wish  in  these  later  years  that  I  had 
spent  less  time  in  it,  or  that  world  of  books  which  it 
opened  into  ;  that  I  had  seen  more  of  the  actual  world, 
and  had  learned  to  know  my  brethren  in  it  better.  I 
might  so  have  amassed  more  material  for  after  use  in 
literature,  but  I  had  to  fit  myself  to  use  it,  and  I  sup- 


SHAKESPEARE.  81 

pose  that  this  was  what  I  was  doing,  in  my  own  way, 
and  by  such  light  as  I  had.  I  often  toiled  wrongly 
and  foolishly ;  but  certainly  I  toiled,  and  I  suppose  no 
work  is  wasted.  Some  strength  I  hope  was  coming 
to  me,  even  from  my  mistakes,  and  though  I  went 
over  ground  that  I  need  not  have  traversed,  if  I  had 
not  been  left  so  much  to  find  the  way  alone,  yet  I  was 
not  standing  still,  and  some  of  the  things  that  I  then 
wished  to  do  I  have  done.  I  do  not  mind  owning  that 
in  others  I  have  failed.  For  instance,  I  have  never 
surpassed  Shakespeare  as  a  poet,  though  I  once  firmly 
meant  to  do  so ;  but  then,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that 
very  few  other  people  have  surpassed  him,  and  that  it 
would  not  have  been  easy, 


XIV. 

IK  MARVEL. 

MY  ardor  for  Shakespeare  must  have  been  at  its 
height  when  I  was  between  sixteen  and  seventeen  years 
old,  for  I  fancy  when  I  began  to  formulate  my  admi- 
ration, and  to  try  to  measure  his  greatness  in  phrases, 
I  was  less  simply  impassioned  than  at  some  earlier 
time.  At  any  rate,  I  am  sure  that  I  did  not  proclaim 
his  planetary  importance  in  creation  until  I  was  at 
least  nineteen.  But  even  at  an  earlier  age  I  no  longer 
worshiped  at  a  single  shrine ;  there  were  many  gods 
in  the  temple  of  my  idolatry,  and  I  bowed  the  knee  to 
them  all  in  a  devotion  which,  if  it  was  not  of  one 
quality,  was  certainly  impartial.  While  I  was  reading, 
and  thinking,  and  living  Shakespeare  with  such  an  in- 
tensity that  I  do  not  see  how  there  could  have  been 
room  in  my  consciousness  for  anything  else,  there 
seem  to  have  been  half  a  dozen  other  divinities  there, 


IK    MARVEL.  83 

great  and  small,  whom  I  have  some  present  difficulty 
in  distinguishing.  I  kept  Irving,  and  Goldsmith,  and 
Cervantes  on  their  old  altars,  but  I  added  new  ones, 
and  these  I  translated  from  the  contemporary  literary 
world  quite  as  often  as  from  the  past.  I  am  rather 
glad  that  among  them  was  the  gentle  and  kindly  Ik 
Marvel,  whose  Reveries  of  a  Bachelor  and  whose 
Dream  Life  the  young  people  of  that  day  were  reading 
with  a  tender  rapture  which  will  not  be  altogether  sur- 
prising, I  dare  say,  to  the  young  people  of  this.  The 
books  have  survived  the  span  of  immortality  fixed  by 
our  amusing  copyright  laws,  and  seem  now,  when  any 
pirate  publisher  may  plunder  their  author,  to  have  a 
new  life  before  them.  Perhaps  this  is  ordered  by 
Providence,  that  those  who  have  no  right  to  them  may 
profit  by  them,  in  that  divine  contempt  of  such  profit 
which  Providence  so  often  shows. 

I  cannot  understand  just  how  I  came  to  know  of 
the  books,  but  I  suppose  it  was  through  the  contem- 
porary criticism  which  I  was  then  beginning  to  read, 
wherever  I  could  find  it,  in  the  magazines  and  newspa- 
pers ;  and  I  could  not  say  just  why  I  thought  it  would 
be  very  comme  ilfaut  to  like  them.  Probably  the  lit- 
erary fine  world,  which  is  always  rubbing  shoulders 
with  the  other  fine  world,  and  bringing  off  a  little  of 


84  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

its  powder  and  perfume,  was  then  dawning  upon  me, 
and  I  was  wishing  to  be  of  it,  and  to  like  the  things 
that  it  liked ;  I  am  not  so  anxious  to  do  it  now.  But 
if  this  is  true,  I  found  the  books  better  than  their 
friends,  and  had  many  a  heartache  from  their  pathos, 
many  a  genuine  glow  of  purpose  from  their  high 
import,  many  a  tender  suffusion  from  their  sentiment. 
I  dare  say  I  should  find  their  pose  now  a  little  old- 
fashioned.  I  believe  it  was  rather  full  of  sighs,  and 
shrugs,  and  starts,  expressed  in  dashes,  and  asterisks, 
and  exclamations,  but  I  am  sure  that  the  feeling  was 
the  genuine  and  manly  sort  which  is  of  all  times  and 
always  the  latest  wear.  Whatever  it  was,  it  sufficed 
to  win  my  heart,  and  to  identify  me  with  whatever 
was  most  romantic  and  most  pathetic  in  it.  I  read 
Dream  Life  first — though  the  Reveries  of  a  Bachelor 
was  written  first,  and  I  believe  is  esteemed  the  better 
book — and  Dream  Life  remains  first  in  my  affections. 
I  have  now  little  notion  what  it  was  about,  but  I  love 
its  memory.  The  book  is  associated  especially  in  my 
mind  with  one  golden  day  of  Indian  summer,  when  I 
carried  it  into  the  woods  with  me,  and  abandoned 
myself  to  a  welter  of  emotion  over  its  page.  I  lay 
under  a  crimson  maple,  and  I  remember  how  the  light 
struck  through  it  and  flushed  the  print  with  the  gules  of 


IK    MARVEL.  85 

the  foliage.  My  friend  was  away  by  this  time  on  one 
of  his  several  absences  in  the  Northwest,  and  I  was 
quite  alone  in  the  absurd  and  irrelevant  melancholy 
with  which  I  read  myself  and  my  circumstances  into 
the  book.  I  began  to  read  them  out  again  in  due 
time,  clothed  with  the  literary  airs  and  graces  that  I 
admired  in  it,  and  for  a  long  time  I  imitated  Ik  Mar- 
vel in  the  voluminous  letters  I  wrote  my  friend  in 
compliance  with  his  Shakespearean  prayer : 

"  To  Milan  let  me  hear  from  thee  by  letters, 

Of  thy  success  in  love,  and  what  news  else 

Betideth  here  in  absence  of  thy  friend; 

And  I  likewise  will  visit  thee  with  mine." 
Milan  was  then  presently  Sheboygan,  Wisconsin, 
and  Verona  was»our  little  village ;  but  they  both  served 
the  soul  of  youth  as  well  as  the  real  places  would  have 
done,  and  were  as  really  Italian  as  anything  else  in  the 
situation  was  really  this  or  that.  Heaven  knows  what 
gaudy  sentimental  parade  we  made  in  our  borrowed 
plumes,  but  if  the  travesty  had  kept  itself  to  the 
written  word  it  would  have  been  all  well  enough.  My 
misfortune  was  to  carry  it  into  print  when  I  began  to 
write  a  story  in  the  Ik  Marvel  manner,  or  rather  to 
compose  it  in  type  at  the  case,  for  that  was  what  I 
did ;  and  it  was  not  altogether  imitated  from  Ik  Mar- 
vel either,  for  I  drew  upon  the  easier  art  of  Dickens 


86  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

at  times,  and  helped  myself  out  with  bald  parodies  of 
Bleak  House  in  many  places.  It  was  all  very  well  at 
the  beginning,  but  I  had  not  reckoned  with  the  future 
sufficiently  to  have  started  with  any  clear  ending  in 
my  mind,  and  as  I  went  on  I  began  to  find  myself 
more  and  more  in  doubt  about  it.  My  material  gave 
out ;  incidents  failed  me ;  the  characters  wavered  and 
threatened  to  perish  on  my  hands.  To  crown  my 
misery  there  grew  up  an  impatience  with  the  story 
among  its  readers,  and  this  found  its  way  to  me  one 
day  when  I  overheard  an  old  farmer  who  came  in 
for  his  paper  say  that  he  did  not  think  that  story 
amounted  to  much.  I  did  not  think  so  either,  but  it 
was  deadly  to  have  it  put  into  words,  and  how  I  es- 
caped the  mortal  effect  of  the  stroke  I  do  not  know. 
Somehow  I  managed  to  bring  the  wretched  thing  to  a 
close,  and  to  live  it  slowly  into  the  past.  Slowly  it 
seemed  then,  but  I  dare  say  it  was  fast  enough;  and 
there  is  always  this  consolation  to  be  whispered  in  the 
ear  of  wounded  vanity,  that  the  world's  memory  is 
equally  bad  for  failure  and  success ;  that  if  it  will  not 
keep  your  triumphs  in  mind  as  you  think  it  ought, 
neither  will  it  long  dwell  upon  your  defeats.  But 
that  experience  was  really  terrible.  It  was  like  some 
dreadful  dream  one  has  of  finding  one's  self  in  battle 


IK   MARVEL.  8T 

without  the  courage  needed  to  carry  one  creditably 
through  the  action,  or  on  the  stage  unprepare'd  by 
study  of  the  part  which  one  is  to  appear  in.  I  have 
never  looked  at  that  story  since,  so  great  was  the 
shame  and  anguish  that  I  suffered  from  it,  and  yet  I  do 
not  think  it  was  badly  conceived,  or  attempted  upon 
lines  that  were  false  or  wrong.  If  it  were  not  for 
what  happened  in  the  past  I  might  like  some  time  to 
write  a  story  on  the  same  lines  in  the  future. 


XV. 

DICKENS. 

WHAT  I  have  said  of  Dickens  reminds  me  that  I 
had  been  reading  him  at  the  same  time  that  I  had  been 
reading  Ik  Marvel ;  but  a  curious  thing  about  the  read- 
ing of  my  later  boyhood  is  that  the  dates  do  not 
sharply  detach  themselves  one  from  another.  This 
may  be  so  because  my  reading  was  much  more  multi- 
farious than  it  had  been  earlier,  or  because  I  was 
reading  always  two  or  three  authors  at  a  time.  I  think 
Macaulay  a  little  antedated  Dickens  in  my  affections, 
but  when  I  came  to  the  novels  of  that  masterful  art- 
ist (as  I  must  call  him,  with  a  thousand  reservations 
as  to  the  times  when  he  is  not  a  master  and  not  an 
artist),  I  did  not  fail  to  fall  under  his  spell. 

This  was  in  a  season  of  great  depression,  when  I 
began  to  feel  in  broken  health  the  effect  of  trying  to 


DICKENS.  89 

burn  my  candle  at  both  ends.  It  seemed  for  a  while 
very  simple  and  easy  to  come  home  in  the  middle  of 
the  afternoon,  when  my  task  at  the  printing-office  was 
done,  and  sit  down  to  my  books  in  my  little  study, 
which  I  did  not  finally  leave  until  the  family  were  in 
bed ;  but  it  was  not  well,  and  it  was  not  enough  that  I 
should  like  to  do  it.  The  most  that  can  be  said  in 
defense  of  such  a  thing  is  that  with  the  strong  native 
impulse  anc.  the  conditions  it  was  inevitable.  If  I 
was  to  do  the  thing  I  wanted  to  do  I  was  to  do  it 
in  that  way,  and  I  wanted  to  do  that  thing,  whatever 
it  was,  more  than  I  wanted  to  do  anything  else,  and 
even  more  than  I  wanted  to  do  nothing.  I  cannot 
make  out  that  I  was  fond  of  study,  or  cared  for  the 
things  I  was  trying  to  do,  except  as  a  means  to 
other  things.  As  far  as  my  pleasure  went,  or  my 
natural  bent  was  concerned,  I  would  rather  have  been 
wandering  through  the  woods  with  a  gun  on  my 
shoulder,  or  lying  under  a  tree,  or  reading  some  book 
that  cost  me  no  sort  of  effort.  But  there  was  much 
more  than  my  pleasure  involved ;  there  was  a  hope  to 
fulfill,  an  aim  to  achieve,  and  I  could  no  more  have 
left  off  trying  for  what  I  hoped  and  aimed  at  than  I 
could  have  left  off  living,  though  I  did  not  know  very 
distinctly  what  either  was.  As  I  look  back  at  the  en- 


90  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

deavor  of  those  days  much  of  it  seems  mere  purblind 
groping,  willful  and  wandering.  I  can  see  that  doing 
all  by  myself  I  was  not  truly  a  law  to  myself,  but  only 
a  sort  of  helpless  force. 

I  studied  Latin  because  I  believed  that  I  should 
read  the  Latin  authors,  and  I  suppose  I  got  as  much 
of  the  language  as  most  school-boys  of  my  age,  but  I 
never  read  any  Latin  author  but  Cornelius  Nepos.  I 
studied  Greek,  and  I  learned  so  much  of  it  as  to  read 
a  chapter  of  the  Testament,  and  an  ode  of  Anacreon. 
Then  I  left  it,  not  because  I  did  not  mean  to  go  far- 
ther, or  indeed  stop  short  of  reading  all  Greek  litera- 
ture, but  because  that  friend  of  mine  and  I  talked  it 
over  and  decided  that  I  could  go  on  with  Greek  any 
time,  but  I  had  better  for  the  present  study  German, 
with  the  help  of  a  German  who  had  come  to  the  vil- 
lage. Apparently  I  was  carrying  forward  an  attack 
on  French  at  the  same  time,  for  I  distinctly  recall  my 
failure  to  enlist  with  me  an  old  gentleman  who  had 
once  lived  a  long  time  in  France,  and  whom  I  hoped 
to  get  at  least  an  accent  from.  Perhaps  because  he 
knew  he  had  no  accent  worth  speaking  of,  or  perhaps 
because  he  did  not  want  the  bother  of  imparting  it,  he 
never  would  keep  any  of  the  engagements  he  made 
with  me,  and  when  we  did  meet  he  so  abounded  in 


DICKENS.  91 

excuses  and  subterfuges  that  he  finally  escaped  me, 
and  I  was  left  to  acquire  an  Italian  accent  of  French 
in  Venice  seven  or  eight  years  later.  At  the  same 
time  I  was  reading  Spanish,  more  or  less,  but  neither 
wisely  nor  too  well.  Having  had  so  little  help  in  my 
studies,!  had  a  stupid  pride  in  refusing  all,  even  such 
as  I  might  have  availed  myself  of,  without  shame,  in 
books,  and  I  would  not  read  any  Spanish  author  with 
English  notes.  I  would  have  him  in  an  edition  wholly 
Spanish  from  beginning  to  end,  and  I  would  fight  my 
way  through  him  single-handed,  with  only  such  aid  as 
I  must  borrow  from  a  lexicon. 

I  now  call  this  stupid,  but  I  have  really  no  more 
right  to  blame  the  boy  who  was  once  I  than  I  have  to 
praise  him,  and  I  am  certainly  not  going  to  do  that. 
In  his  day  and  place  he  did  what  he  could  in  his  own 
way ;  he  had  no  true  perspective  of  life,  but  I  do  not 
know  that  youth  ever  has  that.  Some  strength  came 
to  him  finally  from  the  mere  struggle,  undirected  and 
misdirected  as  it  often  was,  and  such  mental  fibre  as 
he  had  was  toughened  by  the  prolonged  stress.  It 
could  be  said,  of  course,  that  the  time  apparently 
wasted  in  these  effectless  studies  could  have  been  well 
spent  in  deepening  and  widening  a  knowledge  of 
English  literature  never  yet  too  great,  and  I  have  often 


92  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

said  this  myself ;  but  then,  again,  I  am  not  sure  that 
the  studies  were  altogether  effectless.  I  have  some- 
times thought  that  greater  skill  had  come  to  my  hand 
from  them  than  it  would  have  had  without,  and  I  have 
trusted  that  in  making  known  to  me  the  sources  of  so 
much  English,  my  little  Latin  and  less  Greek  have 
enabled  me  to  use  my  own  speech  with  a  subtler  sense 
of  it  than  I  should  have  had  otherwise. 

But  I  will  by  no  means  insist  upon  my  conjecture. 
What  is  certain  is  that  for  the  present  my  studies, 
without  method  and  without  stint,  began  to  tell  upon 
my  health,  and  that  my  nerves  gave  way  in  all  mariner 
of  hypochondriacal  fears.  These  finally  resolved  them- 
selves into  one,  incessant,  inexorable,  which  I  could 
escape  only  through  bodily  fatigue,  or  through  some 
absorbing  interest  that  took  me  out  of  myself  alto- 
gether and  filled  my  morbid  mind  with  the  images  of 
another's  creation. 

In  this  mood  I  first  read  Dickens,  whom  I  had 
known  before  in  the  reading  I  had  listened  to.  But 
now  I  devoured  his  books  one  after  another  as  fast  as 
I  could  read  them.  I  plunged  from  the  heart  of  one 
to  another,  so  as  to  leave  myself  no  chance  for  the 
horrors  that  beset  me.  Some  of  them  remain  associ- 
ated with  the  gloom  and  misery  of  that  time,  so  that 


DICKENS.  93 

when  I  take  them  up  they  bring  back  its  dreadful 
shadow.  But  I  have  since  read  them  all  more  than 
once,  and  I  have  had  my  time  of  .thinking  Dickens, 
talking  Dickens,  and  writing  Dickens,  as  we  all  had 
who  lived  in  the  days  of  the  mighty  magician.  I 
fancy  the  readers  who  have  come  to  him  since  he 
ceased  to  fill  the  world  with  his  influence  can  have  lit- 
tle notion  how  great  it  was.  In  that  time  he  colored 
the  parlance  of  the  English-speaking  race,  and  formed 
upon  himself  every  minor  talent  attempting  fiction. 
While  his  glamour  lasted  it  was  no  more  possible  for 
a  young  novelist  to  escape  writing  Dickens  than  it  was 
for  a  young  poet  to  escape  writing  Tennyson.  I  ad- 
mired other  authors  more;  I  loved  them  more,  but 
when  it  came  to  a  question  of  trying  to  do  something 
in  fiction  I  was  compelled,  as  by  a  law  of  nature,  to 
do  it  at  least  partially  in  his  way. 

All  the  while  that  he  held  me  so  fast  by  his  potent 
charm  I  was  aware  that  it  was  a  very  rough  magic,, 
now  and  again,  but  I  could  not  assert  my  sense  of  this 
against  him  in  matters  of  character  and  structure.  To 
these  I  gave  in  helplessly;  their  very  grotesqueness 
was  proof  of  their  divine  origin,  and  I  bowed  to  the 
crudest  manifestations  of  his  genius  in  these  kinds  as 
if  they  were  revelations  not  to  be  doubted  without 


94  MY     LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

sacrilege.  But  in  certain  small  matters,  as  it  were  of 
ritual,  I  suffered  myself  to  think,  and  I  remember 
boldly  speaking  my  mind  about  his  style,  which  I 
thought  bad. 

I  spoke  it  even  to  the  quaint  character  whom  I  bor- 
rowed his  books  from,  and  who  might  almost  have 
come  out  of  his  books.  He  lived  in  Dickens  in  a 
measure  that  I  have  never  known  another  to  do,  and 
my  contumely  must  have  brought  him  a  pang  that  was 
truly  a  personal  grief.  He  forgave  it,  no  doubt  be- 
cause I  bowed  in  the  Dickens  worship  without  ques- 
tion on  all  other  points.  He  was  then  a  man  well  on 
toward  fifty,  and  he  had  come  to  America  early  in  life, 
and  had  lived  in  our  village  many  years,  without  cast- 
ing one  of  his  English  prejudices,  or  ceasing  to  be  of 
a  contrary  opinion  on  every  question,  political,  relig- 
ious and  social.  He  had  no  fixed  belief,  but  he  went 
to  the  service  of  his  church  whenever  it  was  held 
among  us,  and  he  revered  the  Book  of  Common  Pray- 
er while  he  disputed  the  authority  of  the  Bible  with 
all  comers.  He  had  become  a  citizen,  but  he  despised 
democracy,  and  achieved  a  hardy  consistency  only  by 
voting  with  the  pro-slavery  party  upon  all  measures 
friendly  to  the  institution  which  he  considered  the 
scandal  and  reproach  of  the  American  name.  From  a 


DICKENS.  95 

heart  tender  to  all,  lie  liked  to  say  wanton,  savage  and 
cynical  things,  but  he  bore  no  malice  if  you  gainsaid 
him.  I  know  nothing  of  his  origin,  except  the  fact  of 
his  being  an  Englishman,  or  what  his  first  calling  had 
been;  but  he  had  evolved  among  us  from  a  house- 
painter  to  an  organ-builder,  and  he  had  a  passionate 
love  of  music.  He  built  his  organs  from  the  ground 
up,  and  made  every  part  of  them  with  his  own  hands ; 
I  believe  they  were  very  good,  and  at  any  rate  the 
churches  in  the  country  about  took  them  from  him  as 
fast  as  he  could  make  them.  He  had  one  in  his  own 
house,  and  it  was  fine  to  see  him  as  he  sat  before  it, 
with  his  long,  tremulous  hands  outstretched  to  the 
keys,  his  noble  head  thrown  back  and  his  sensitive 
face  lifted  in  the  rapture  of  his  music.  He  was  a 
rarely  intelligent  creature,  and  an  artist  in  every  fibre ; 
and  if  you  did  not  quarrel  with  his  manifold  perver- 
sities, he  was  a  delightful  companion. 

After  my  friend  went  away  I  fell  much  to  him  for 
society,  and  we  took  long,  rambling  walks  together,  or 
sat  on  the  stoop  before  his  door,  or  lounged  over  the 
books  in  the  drug-store,  and  talked  evermore  of  liter- 
ature. He  must  have  been  nearly  three  times  my  age, 
but  that  did  not  matter ;  we  met  in  the  equality  of  the 
ideal  world  where  there  is  neither  old  nor  young,  any 


96  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

more  than  there  is  rich  or  poor.  He  had  read  a  great 
deal,  but  of  all  he  had  read  he  liked  Dickens  best, 
and  was  always  coming  back  to  him  with  affection, 
whenever  the  talk  strayed.  He  could  not  make  me 
out  when  I  criticized  the  style  of  Dickens ;  and  when 
I  praised  Thackeray's  style  to  the  disadvantage  of 
Dickens's  he  could  only  accuse  me  of  a  sort  of  aesthetic 
snobbishness  in  my  preference.  Dickens,  he  said, 
was  for  the  million,  and  Thackeray  was  for  the  upper 
ten  thousand.  His  view  amused  me  at  the  time,  and 
yet  I  am  not  sure  that  it  was  altogether  mistaken. 

There  is  certainly  a  property  in  Thackeray  that 
somehow  flatters  the  reader  into  the  belief  that  he  is 
better  than  other  people ;  and  with  a  young  man  es- 
pecially he  is  of  an  insidiously  aristocratic  effect.  I 
do  not  mean  to  say  that  this  was  why  I  thought  him 
a  finer  writer  than  Dickens,  but  I  will  own  that  it  was 
probably  one  of  the  reasons  why  I  liked  him  better; 
if  I  appreciated  him  so  fully  as  I  felt,  I  must  be  of  a 
finer  porcelain  than  the  earthen  pots  which  were  not 
aware  of  any  particular  difference  in  the  various  liquors 
poured  into  them.  In  Dickens  the  virtue  of  his  so- 
cial defect  is  that  he  never  appeals  to  the  principle 
which  sniffs,  in  his  reader.  The  base  of  his  work  is 
the  whole  breadth  and  depth  of  humanity  itself.  It 


DICKENS.  97 

is  helplessly  elemental,  but  it  is  not  the  less  grandly 
so,  and  if  it- deals  with  the  simpler  manifestations  of 
character,  character  affected  by  the  interests  and  pas- 
sions rather  than  the  tastes  and  preferences,  it  certainly 
deals  with  the  larger  moods  through  them.  I  do  not 
know  that  in  the  whole  range  of  his  work  he  once  suf- 
fers us  to  feel  our  superiority  to  a  fellow-creature 
through  any  social  accident,  or  except  for  some  moral 
cause.  This  makes  him  very  fit  reading  for  a  boy, 
and  I  should  say  that  a  boy  could  get  only  good  from 
him.  His  view  of  the  world  and  of  society,  though  it 
was  very  little  philosophized,  was  instinctively  sane 
and  reasonable,  even  when  it  was  most  impossible. 

We  are  just  beginning  to  discern  that  certain  con- 
ceptions of  our  relations  to  our  fellow-men,  once  for- 
mulated in  generalities  which  met  with  a  dramatic 
acceptation  from  the  world,  and  were  then  rejected  by 
it  as  mere  rhetoric,  have  really  a  vital  truth  in  them, 
and  that  if  they  have  ever  seemed  false  it  was  because 
of  the  false  conditions  in  which  we  still  live.  Equal- 
ity and  fraternity,  these  are  the  ideals  which  once 
moved  the  world,  and  then  fell  into  despite  and  mock- 
ery, as  unrealities ;  but  now  they  assert  themselves  in 
our  hearts  once  more. 

Blindly,  unwittingly,  erringly  as  Dickens  often 
G 


98  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

urged  them,  these  ideals  mark  the  whole  tendency  of 
his  fiction,  and  they  are  what  endear  him  to  the  heart, 
and  will  keep  him  dear  to  it  long  after  many  a  cun- 
ninger  artificer  in  letters  has  passed  into  forgetf ulness. 
I  do  not  pretend  that  I  perceived  the  full  scope  of  his 
books,  but  I  was  aware  of  it  in  the  finer  sense  which 
is  not  consciousness.  While  I  read  him,  I  was  in  a 
world  where  the  right  came  out  best,  as  I  believe  it 
will  yet  do  in  this  world,  and  where  merit  was  crowned 
with  the  success  which  I  believe  will  yet  attend  it  in 
our  daily  life,  untrammeled  by  social  convention  or 
economic  circumstance.  In  that  world  of  his,  in  the 
ideal  world,  to  which  the  real  world  must  finally  con- 
form itself,  I  dwelt  among  the  shows  of  things,  but 
under  a  Providence  that  governed  all  things  to  a  good 
end,  and  where  neither  wealth,  nor  birth  could  avail 
against  virtue  or  right.  Of  course  it  was  in  a  way  all 
crude  enough,  and  was  already  contradicted  by  expe- 
rience in  the  small  sphere  of  my  own  being ;  but  never- 
theless it  was  true  with  that  truth  which  is  at  the 
bottom  of  things,  and  I  was  happy  in  it.  I  could  not 
fail  to  love  the  mind  which  conceived  it,  and  my  wor- 
ship of  Dickens  was  more  grateful  than  that  I  had  yet 
given  any  writer.  I  did  not  establish  with  him  that 
one-sided  understanding  which  I  had  with  Cervantes 


DICKENS.  99 

and  Shakespeare ;  with  a  contemporary  that  was  not 
possible,  and  as  an  American  I  was  deeply  hurt  at  the 
things  he  had  said  against  us,  and  the  more  hurt  be- 
cause I  felt  that  they  were  often  so  just.  But  I  was 
for  the  time  entirely  m's,  and  I  could  not  have  wished 
to  write  like  any  one  else. 

I  do  not  pretend  that  the  spell  I  was  under  was 
wholly  of  a  moral  or  social  texture.  For  the  most 
part  I  was  charmed  with  him  because  he  was  a  de- 
lightful story  teller;  because  he  could  thrill  me,  and 
make  me  hot  and  cold ;  because  he  could  make  me 
laugh  and  cry,  and  stop  my  pulse  and  breath  at  will. 
There  seemed  an  inexhaustible  source  of  humor  and 
pathos  in  his  work,  which  I  now  find  choked  and  dry; 
I  cannot  laugh  any  more  at  Pickwick  or  Sam  Weller, 
or  weep  for  little  Nell  or  Paul  Dombey ;  their  jokes, 
their  griefs,  seemed  to  me  to  be  turned  on,  and  to 
have  a  mechanical  action.  But  beneath  all  is  still  the 
strong  drift  of  a  genuine  emotion,  a  sympathy,  deep 
and  sincere,  with  the  poor,  the  lowly,  the  unfortunate. 
In  all  that  vast  range  of  fiction,  there  is  nothing  that 
tells  for  the  strong,  because  they  are  strong,  against 
the  weak,  nothing  that  tells  for  the  haughty  against 
the  humble,  nothing  that  tells  for  wealth  against  pov- 
erty. The  effect  of  Dickens  is  purely  democratic,  and 


100  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

however  contemptible  he  found  our  pseudo-equality, 
he  was  more  truly  democratic  than  any  American  who 
had  yet  written  fiction.  I  suppose  it  was  our  instinct- 
ive perception  in  the  region  of  his  instinctive  expres- 
sion, that  made  him  so  dear  to~  us,  and  wounded  our 
silly  vanity  so  keenly  through  our  love  when  he  told 
us  the  truth  about  our  horrible  sham  of  a  slave-based 
freedom.  But  at  any  rate  the  democracy  is  there  in 
his  work  more  than  he  knew  perhaps,  or  would  ever 
have  known,  or  ever  recognized  by  his  own  life.  In 
fact,  when  one  comes  to  read  the  story  of  his  life,  and 
to  know  that  he  was  really  and  lastingly  ashamed  of 
having  once  put  up  shoe-blacking  as  a  boy,  and  was 
unable  to  forgive  his  mother  for  suffering  him  to  be 
so  degraded,  one  perceives  that  he  too  was  the  slave 
of  conventions  and  the  victim  of  conditions  which  it 
is  the  highest  function  of  his  fiction  to  help  destroy. 
I  imagine  that  my  early  likes  and  dislikes  in  Dick- 
ens were  not  very  discriminating.  I  liked  David  Cop- 
perfield,  and  Barnaby  Rudge,  and  Bleak  House,  and  I 
still  like  them ;  but  I  do  not  think  I  liked  them  more 
than  Dombey  &  Son,  and  Nicholas  Nickleby,  and  the 
Pickwick  Papers,  which  I  cannot  read  now  with  any 
sort  of  patience,  not  to  speak  of  pleasure.  I  liked 
Martin  Chuzzlewit,  too,  and  the  other  day  I  read  a 


DICKENS.  101 

great  part  of  it  again,  and  found  it  roughly  true  in  the 
passages  that  referred  to  America,  though  it  was  sur- 
charged in  the  serious  moods,  and  caricatured  in  the 
comic.  The  English  are  always  inadequate  observers ; 
they  seem  too  full  of  themselves  to  have  eyes  and  ears 
for  any  alien  people;  but  as  far  as  an  Englishman 
could,  Dickens  had  caught  the  look  of  our  life  in  cer- 
tain aspects.  His  report  of  it  was  clumsy  and  farcical ; 
it  wanted  nicety  of  accent  and  movement,  but  in  a 
large,  loose  way  it  was  like  enough ;  at  least  he  had 
caught  the  note  of  our  self-satisfied,  intolerant  and 
hypocritical  provinciality,  and  this  was  not  altogether 
lost  in  his  mocking  horse-play. 

I  cannot  make  out  that  I  was  any  the  less  fond  of 
Dickens  because  of  it.  I  believe  I  was  rather  more 
willing  to  accept  it  as  a  faithful  portraiture  then  than 
I  should  be  now;  and  I  certainly  never  made  any 
question  of  it  with  my  friend  the  organ-builder.  Mar- 
tin Chuzzlewit  was  a  favorite  book  with  him,  and  so 
was  the  Old  Curiosity  Shop.  No  doubt  a  fancied 
affinity  with  Tom  Pinch  through  their  common  love  of 
music  made  him  like  that  most  sentimental  and  im- 
probable personage,  whom  he  would  have  disowned 
and  laughed  to  scorn  if  he  had  met  him  in  life ;  but  it 
was  a  purely  altruistic  sympathy  that  he  felt  with 


102  MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

Little  Nell  and  her  grandfather.  He  was  fond  of 
reading  the  pathetic  passages  from  both  books,  and  I 
can  still  hear  his  rich,  vibrant  voice  as  it  lingered  in 
tremulous  emotion  on  the  periods  he  loved.  He  would 
catch  the  volume  up  anywhere,  any  time,  and  begin  to 
read,  at  the  book-store,  or  the  harness-shop,  or  the 
law-office,  it  did  not  matter  in  the  wide  leisure  of  a 
country  village,  in  those  days  before  the  war,  when 
people  had  all  the  time  there  was ;  and  he  was  sure  of 
his  audience  as  long  as  he  chose  to  read.  One  Christ- 
mas eve,  in  answer  to  a  general  wish,  he  read  the 
Christmas  Carol  in  the  Court  House,  and  people  came 
from  all  about  to  hear  him. 

He  was  an  invalid  and  he  died  long  since,  ending  a 
life  of  suffering  in  the  saddest  way.  Several  years 
before  his  death  money  fell  to  his  family,  and  he  went 
with  them  to  an  Eastern  city,  where  he  tried  in  vain 
to  make  himself  at  home.  He  never  ceased  to  pine 
for  the  village  he  had  left,  with  its  old  companion- 
ships, its  easy  usages,  its  familiar  faces ;  and  he  es- 
caped to  it  again  and  again,  till  at  last  every  tie  was 
severed,  and  he  could  come  back  no  more.  He  was 
never  reconciled  to  the  change,  and  in  a  manner  he  did 
really  die  of  the  homesickness  which  deepened  an  he- 
reditary taint,  and  enfeebled  him  to  the  disorder  that 


DICKENS.  103 

carried  him  off.  My  memories  of  Dickens  remain 
mingled  with  my  memories  of  this  quaint  and  most 
original  genius,  and  though  I  knew  Dickens  long  be- 
fore I  knew  his  lover,  I  can  scarcely  think  of  one  with- 
out thinking  of  the  other. 


XVI. 

WORDSWORTH,  LOWELL,  CHAUCER. 

CERTAIN  other  books  I  associate  with  another  pa- 
thetic nature,  of  whom  the  organ-builder  and  I  were 
both  fond.  This  was  the  young  poet  who  looked  after 
the  book  half  of  the  village  drug  and  book  store,  and 
who  wrote  poetry  in  such  leisure  as  he  found  from  his 
duties,  and  with  such  strength  as  he  found  in  the  dis- 
ease preying  upon  him.  He  must  have  been  far  gone 
in  consumption  when  I  first  knew  him,  for  I  have  no 
recollection  of  a  time  when  his  voice  was  not  faint  and 
husky,  his  sweet  smile  wan,  and  his  blue  eyes  dull 
with  the  disease  that  wasted  him  away, 

"  Like  wax  in  the  fire, 
Like  snow  in  the  sun." 

People  spoke  of  him  as  once  strong  and  vigorous,  but 
I  recall  him  fragile  and  pale,  gentle,  patient,  knowing 
his  inexorable  doom,  and  not  hoping  or  seeking  to  es- 


WORDSWORTH,    LOWELL,    CHAUCER.  105 

cape  it.  As  the  end  drew  near  he  left  his  employment 
and  went  home  to  the  farm,  some  twenty  miles  away, 
where  I  drove  out  to  see  him  once  in  the  depths  of  a 
winter  which  was  to  be  his  last.  My  heart  was  heavy 
all  the  time,  but  he  tried  to  make  the  visit  pass  cheer- 
fully with  our  wonted  talk  about  books.  Only  at 
parting,  when  he  took  my  hand  in  his  thin,  cold 
clasp,  he  said,  "  I  suppose  my  disease  is  progressing," 
with  the  same  patience  that  he  always  showed. 

I  did  not  see  him  again,  and  I  am  not  sure  now 
that  his  gift  was  very  distinct  or  very  great.  It  was 
slight  and  graceful  rather,  I  fancy,  and  if  he  had  lived 
it  might  not  have  sufficed  to  make  him  widely  known, 
but  he  had  a  real  and  a  very  delicate  sense  of  beauty 
in  literature,  and  I  believe  it  was  through  sympathy 
with  his  preferences  that  I  came  into  appreciation  of 
several  authors  whom  I  had  not  known,  or  had  not 
cared  for  before.  There  could  not  have  been  many 
shelves  of  books  in  that  store,  and  I  came  to  be  pretty 
well  acquainted  with  them  all  before  I  began  to  buy 
them.  For  the  most  part,  I  do  not  think  it  occurred 
to  me  that  they  were  there  to  be  sold ;  for  this  pale 
poet  seemed  indifferent  to  the  commercial  property  in 
them,  and  seemed  only  to  wish  me  to  like  them. 

I  am  not  sure,  but  I  think  it  was  through  some  vol- 


106  MY    LJTEEARY   PASSIONS. 

umes  which  I  found  in  his  charge  that  I  first  came  to 
know  of  De  Quincey ;  he  was  fond  of  Dr.  Holmes's 
poetry ;  he  loved  Whittier  and  Longfellow,  each  rep- 
resented in  his  slender  stock  by  some  distinctive  work. 
There  were  several  stray  volumes  of  Thackeray's  minor 
writings,  and  I  still  have  the  Yellowplush  Papers  in 
the  smooth  red  cloth  (now  pretty  well  tattered)  of 
Appleton's  Popular  Library,  which  I  bought  there. 
But  most  of  the  books  were  in  the  famous  old  brown 
cloth  of  Ticknor  &  Fields,  which  was  a  warrant  of  ex- 
cellence in  the  literature  it  covered.  Besides  these 
there  were  standard  volumes  of  poetry,  published  by 
Phillips  &  Sampson,  from  worn-out  plates ;  for  a  birth- 
day present  my  mother  got  me  Wordsworth  in  this 
shape,  and  I  am  glad  to  think  that  I  once  read  the 
Excursion  in  it,  for  I  do  not  think  I  could  do  so  now, 
and  I  have  a  feeling  that  it  is  very  right  and  fit  to 
have  read  the  Excursion.  To  be  honest,  it  was  very 
hard  reading  even  then,  and  I  could  not  truthfully  pre- 
tend that  I  have  ever  liked  Wordsworth  except  in 
parts,  though  for  the  matter  of  that,  I  do  not  suppose 
that  any  one  ever  did.  I  tried  hard  enough  to  like 
everything  in  him,  for  I  had  already  learned  enough 
to  know  that  I  ought  to  like  him,  and  that  if  I  did 
not,  it  was  a  proof  of  intellectual  and  moral  inferiority 


WORDSWORTH,    LOWELL,    CHAUCER.  107 

in  me.  My  early  idol,  Pope,  had  already  been  tum- 
bled into  the  dust  by  Lowell,  whose  lectures  on  Eng- 
lish Poetry  had  lately  been  given  in  Boston,  and  had 
met  with  my  rapturous  acceptance  in  such  newspaper 
report  as  I  had  got  of  them.  So,  my  preoccupations 
were  all  in  favor  of  the  Lake  School,  and  it  was  both 
in  my  will  and  my  conscience  to  like  Wordsworth.  If 
I  did  not  do  so  it  was  not  my  fault,  and  the  fault  re- 
mains very  much  what  it  first  was. 

I  feel  and  understand  him  more  deeply  than  I  did 
then,  but  I  do  not  think  that  I  then  failed  of  the 
meaning  of  much  that  I  read  in  him,  and  I  am  sure 
that  my  senses  were  quick  to  all  the  beauty  in  him. 
After  suffering  once  through  the  Excursion  I  did  not 
afflict  myself  with  it  again,  but  there  were  other  poems 
of  his  which  I  read  over  and  over,  as  I  fancy  it  is  the 
habit  of  every  lover  of  poetry  to  do  with  the  pieces  he 
is  fond  of.  Still,  I  do  not  make  out  that  Wordsworth 
was  ever  a  passion  of  mine  ;  on  the  other  hand,  neither 
was  Byron.  Him,  too,  I  liked  in  passages  and  in  cer- 
tain poems  before  I  read  Wordsworth  at  all ;  I  read 
him  throughout,  but  I  did  not  try  to  imitate  him,  and 
I  did  not  try  to  imitate  Wordsworth. 

Those  lectures  of  Lowell's  had  a  great  influence 
with  me,  and  I  tried  to  like  whatever  they  bade  me 


108  MY     LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

like,  after  a  fashion  common  to  all  young  people  when 
they  begin  to  read  criticisms ;  their  aesthetic  pride  is 
touched ;  they  wish  to  realize  that  they  too  can  feel 
the  fine  things  the  critic  admires.  From  this  motive 
they  do  a  great  deal  of  factitious  liking ;  but  after  all 
the  affections  will  not  be  bidden,  and  the  critic  can 
only  avail  to  give  a  point  of  view,  to  enlighten  a  per- 
spective. When  I  read  Lowell's  praises  of  him,  I  had 
all  the  will  in  the  world  to  read  Spencer,  and  I  really 
meant  to  do  so,  but  I  have  not  done  so  to  this  day, 
and  as  often  as  I  have  tried  I  have  found  it  impossi- 
ble. It  was  not  so  with  Chaucer,  whom  I  loved  from 
the  first  word  of  his  which  I  found  quoted  in  those 
lectures,  and  in  Chambers's  Encyclopaedia  of  English 
Literature,  which  I  had  borrowed  of  my  friend  the 
organ-builder. 

In  fact,  I  may  fairly  class  Chaucer  among  my  pas- 
sions, for  I  read  him  with  that  sort  of  personal  attach- 
ment I  had  for  Cervantes,  who  resembled  him  in  a 
certain  sweet  and  cheery  humanity.  But  I  do  not 
allege  this  as  the  reason,  for  I  had  the  same  feeling 
for  Pope,  who  was  not  like  either  of  them.  Kissing 
goes  by  favor,  in  literature  as  in  life,  and  one  cannot 
quite  account  for  one's  passions  in  either ;  what  is  cer- 
tain is,  I  liked  Chaucer  and  I  did  not  like  Spencer ; 


WORDSWORTH,    LOWELL,    CHAUCER.  109 

possibly  there  was  an  affinity  between  reader  and 
poet,  but  if  there  was  I  should  be  at  a  loss  to  name 
it,  unless  it  was  the  liking  for  reality,  and  the  sense  of 
mother  earth  in  human  life.  By  the  time  I  had  read 
all  of  Chaucer  that  I  could  find  in  the  various  collec- 
tions and  criticisms,  my  father  had  been  made  a  clerk 
in  the  legislature,  and  on  one  of  his  visits  home  he 
brought  me  the  poet's  works  from  the  State  Library, 
and  I  set  about  reading  them  with  a  glossary.  It  was 
not  easy,  but  it  brought  strength  with  it,  and  lifted 
my  heart  with  a  sense  of  noble  companionship. 

I  will  not  pretend  that  I  was  insensible  to  the  gross- 
ness  of  the  poet's  time,  which  I  found  often  enough 
in  the  poet's  verse,  as  well  as  the  goodness  of  his  na- 
ture, and  my  father  seems  to  have  felt  a  certain  mis- 
giving about  it.  He  repeated  to  me  the  librarian's 
question  as  to  whether  he  thought  he  ought  to  put  an 
unexpurgated  edition  in  the  hands  of  a  boy,  and  his 
own  answer  that  he  did  not  believe  it  would  hurt  me. 
It  was  a  kind  of  appeal  to  me  to  make  the  event  justify 
him,  and  I  suppose  he  had  not  given  me  the  book 
without  due  reflection.  Probably  he  reasoned  that 
with  my  greed  for  all  manner  of  literature  the  bad 
would  become  known  to  me  along  with  the  good  at 
any  rate,  and  I  had  better  know  that  he  knew  it. 


110  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

The  streams  of  filth  flow  down  through  the  ages  in 
literature,  which  sometimes  seems  little  better  than  an 
open  sewer,  and,  as  I  have  said,  I  do  not  see  why  the 
time  should  not  come  when  the  noxious  and  noisome 
channels  should  be  stopped ;  but  the  base  of  the  mind 
is  bestial,  and  so  far  the  beast  in  us  has  insisted  upon 
having  his  full  say.  The  worst  of  lewd  literature  is 
that  it  seems  to  give  a  sanction  to  lewdness  in  the 
life,  and  that  inexperience  takes  this  effect  for  reality : 
that  is  the  danger  and  the  harm,  and  I  think  the  fact 
ought  not  to  be  blinked.  Compared  with  the  meaner 
poets  the  greater  are  the  cleaner,  and  Chaucer  was 
probably  safer  than  any  other  English  poet  of  his  time, 
but  I  am  not  going  to  pretend  that  there  are  not  things 
in  Chaucer  which  one  would  be  the  better  for  not 
reading ;  and  so  far  as  these  words  of  mine  shall  be 
taken  for  counsel,  I  am  not  willing  that  they  should 
unqualifiedly  praise  him.  The  matter  is  by  no  means 
simple ;  it  is  not  easy  to  conceive  of  a  means  of  puri- 
fying the  literature  of  the  past  without  weakening  it, 
and  even  falsifying  it,  but  it  is  best  to  own  that  it  is 
in  all  respects  just  what  it  is,  and  not  to  feign  it  oth- 
erwise. I  am  not  ready  to  say  that  the  harm  from  it 
is  positive,  but  you  do  get  smeared  with  it,  and  the 
filthy  thought  lives  with  the  filthy  rhyme  in  the  ear, 


WORDSWORTH,    LOWELL,    CHAUCER.  Ill 

even  when  it  does  not  corrupt  the  heart  or  make  it 
seem  a  light  thing  for  the  reader's  tongue  and  pen  to 
sin  in  kind. 

I  loved  my  Chaucer  too  well,  I  hope,  not  to  get 
some  good  from  the  best  in  him ;  and  my  reading  of 
criticism  had  taught  me  how  and  where  to  look  for  the 
best,  and  to  know  it  when  I  had  found  it.  Of  course 
I  began  to  copy  him.  That  is,  I  did  not  attempt  any- 
thing like  his  tales  in  kind ;  they  must  have  seemed 
too  hopelessly  far  away  in  taste  and  time,  but  I  stud- 
ied his  verse,  and  imitated  a  stanza  which  I  found  in 
some  of  his  things  and  had  not  found  elsewhere ;  I  re- 
joiced in  the  freshness  and  sweetness  of  his  diction, 
and  though  I  felt  that  his  structure  was  obsolete,  there 
was  in  his  wording  something  homelier  and  heartier 
than  the  imported  analogues  that  had  taken  the  place 
of  the  phrases  he  used. 

I  began  to  employ  in  my  own  work  the  archaic 
words  that  I  fancied  most,  which  was  futile  and  foolish 
enough,  and  I  formed  a  preference  for  the  simpler 
Anglo-Saxon  woof  of  our  speech,  which  was  not  so 
bad.  Of  course,  being  left  so  much  as  I  was  to  my 
own  whim  and  caprice  in  such  things,  I  could  not  keep 
a  just  mean ;  I  had  an  aversion  for  the  Latin  deriva- 
tives which  was  nothing  short  of  a  craze.  Some  half- 


112  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

bred  critic  whom  I  had  read  made  me  believe  that 
English  could  be  written  without  them,  and  had  better 
be  written  so,  and  I  did  not  escape  from  this  lament- 
able error  until  I  had  produced  with  weariness  and  vex- 
ation of  spirit  several  pieces  of  prose  wholly  composed 
of  monosyllables.  I  suspect  now  that  I  did  not  always 
stop  to  consider  whether  my  short  words  were  not  as 
Latin  by  race  as  any  of  the  long  words  I  rejected,  and 
that  I  only  made  sure  they  were  short. 

The  frivolous  ingenuity  which  wasted  itself  in  this 
exercise  happily  could  not  hold  out  long,  and  in  verse 
it  was  pretty  well  helpless  from  the  beginning.  Yet 
I  will  not  altogether  blame  it,  for  it  made  me  know, 
as  nothing  else  could,  the  resources  of  our  tongue  in 
that  sort;  and  in  the  revolt  from  the  slavish  bondage 
I  took  upon  myself  I  did  not  go  so  far  as  to  plunge 
into  any  very  wild  polysyllabic  excesses.  I  still  like 
the  little  word  if  it  says  the  thing  I  want  to  say  as 
well  as  the  big  one,  but  I  honor  above  all  the  word 
that  says  the  thing.  At  the  same  time  I  confess  that 
I  have  a  prejudice  against  certain  words  that  I  can- 
not overcome ;  the  sight  of  some  offends  me,  the  sound 
of  others,  and  rather  than  use  one  of  those  detested  vo- 
cables, even  when  I  perceive  that  it  would  convey 
my  exact  meaning,  I  would  cast  about  long  for  some 


AVORDSWORTII,    LOWELL,    CHAUCER.  113 

other.     I  think  this  is  a  foible,  and  a  disadvantage, 
but  I  do  not  deny  it. 

An  author  who  had  much  to  do  with  preparing  me 
for  the  quixotic  folly  in  point  was  that  good  Thomas 
Babington  Macaulay,  who  taught  simplicity  of  diction 
in  phrases  of  as  "learned  length  and  thundering 
sound,"  as  any  he  would  have  had  me  shun,  and  who 
deplored  the  Latinistic  English  of  Johnson  in  terms 
emulous  of  the  great  doctor's  orotundity  and  ponder- 
osity. I  wonder  now  that  I  did  not  see  how  my  phy- 
sician avoided  his  medicine,  but  I  did  not,  and  I  went 
on  to  spend  myself  in  an  endeavor  as  vain  and  sense- 
less as  any  that  pedantry  has  conceived.  It  was  none 
the  less  absurd  because  I  believed  in  it  so  devoutly, 
and  sacrificed  myself  to  it  with  such  infinite  pains  and 
labor.  But  this  was  long  after  I  read  Macaulay,  who 
was  one  of  my  grand  passions  before  Dickens  or 
Chaucer. 


XVII. 

MACAULAY. 

ONE  of  the  many  characters  of  the  village  was  the 
machinist  who  had  his  shop  under  our  printing-office 
when  we  first  brought  our  newspaper  to  the  place, 
and  who  was  just  then  a  machinist  because  he  was 
tired  of  being  many  other  things,  and  had  not  yet 
made  up  his  mind  what  he  should  be  next.  He  could 
have  been  whatever  he  turned  his  agile  intellect  and 
his  cunning  hand  to ;  he  had  been  a  schoolmaster  and 
a  watchmaker,  and  I  believe  an  amateur  doctor  and 
irregular  lawyer ;  he  talked  and  wrote  brilliantly,  and 
he  was  one  of  the  group  that  nightly  disposed  of 
every  manner  of  theoretical  and  practical  question  at 
the  drug-store ;  it  was  quite  indifferent  to  him  which 
side  he  took ;  what  he  enjoyed  was  the  mental  exer- 
cise. He  was  in  consumption,  as  so  many  were  in 
that  region,  and  he  carbonized  against  it,  as  he  said ; 
he  took  his  carbon  in  the  liquid  form,  and  the  last 


MACATJLAY.  115 

time  I  saw  him  the  carbon  had  finally  prevailed  over 
the  consumption,  but  it  had  itself  become  a  seated 
vice ;  that  was  many  years  since,  and  it  is  many  years 
since  he  died. 

He  must  have  been  known  to  me  earlier,  but  I 
remember  him  first  as  he  swam  vividly  into  my  ken, 
with  a  volume  of  Macaulay's  essays  in  his  hand,  one 
day.  Less  figuratively  speaking,  he  came  up  into  the 
printing-office  to  expose  from  the  book  the  nefarious 
plagiarism  of  an  editor  in  a  neighboring  city,  who  had 
adapted  with  the  change  of  names  and  a  word  or  two 
here  and  there,  whole  passages  from  the  essay  on 
Barere,  to  the  denunciation  of  a  brother  editor.  It 
was  a  very  simple-hearted  fraud,  and  it  was  all  done 
with  an  innocent  trust  in  the  popular  ignorance  which 
now  seems  to  me  a  little  pathetic ;  but  it  was  certainly 
very  bare-faced,  and  merited  the  public  punishment 
which  the  discoverer  inflicted  by  means  of  what  jour- 
nalists call  the  deadly  parallel  column.  The  effect 
ought  logically  to  have  been  ruinous  for  the  plagiarist, 
but  it  was  really  nothing  of  the  kind.  He  simply 
ignored  the  exposure,  and  the  comments  of  the  other 
city  papers,  and  in  the  process  of  time  he  easily  lived 
down  the  memory  of  it  and  went  on  to  greater  use- 
fulness in  his  profession. 


116  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

But  for  the  moment  it  appeared  to  me  a  tremen- 
dous crisis,  and  1  listened  as  the  minister  of  justice 
read  his  communication,  with  a  thrill  which  lost  itself 
in  the  interest  I  suddenly  felt  in  the  plundered  author. 
Those  facile,  and  shallow,  and  brilliant  phrases  and 
ideas  struck  me  as  the  finest  things  I  had  yet  known 
in  literature,  and  I  borrowed  the  book  and  read  it 
through.  Then  I  borrowed  another  volume  of  Macau- 
lay's  essays,  and  another  and  another,  till  I  had  read 
them  every  one.  It  was  like  a  long  debauch,  from 
which  I  emerged  with  regret  that  it  should  ever  end. 

I  tried  other  essayists,  other  critics,  whom  the  ma- 
chinist had  in  his  library,  but  it  was  useless ;  neither 
Sidney  Smith  nor  Thomas  Carlyle  could  console  me ; 
I  sighed  for  more  Macaulay  and  evermore  Macaulay. 
I  read  his  history  of  England,  and  I  could  measurably 
console  myself  with  that,  but  only  measurably ;  and  I 
could  not  go  back  to  the  essays  and  read  them  again, 
for  it  seemed  to  me  I  had  absorbed  them  so  thor- 
oughly that  I  had  left  nothing  unenjoyed  in  them.  I 
used  to  talk  with  the  machinist  about  them,  and  with 
the  organ-builder,  and  with  my  friend  the  printer,  but 
no  one  seemed  to  feel  the  intense  fascination  for  them 
that  I  did,  and  that  I  should  now  be  quite  unable  to 
account  for. 


MACAULAY.  117 

Once  more  I  had  an  author  for  whom  I  could  feel 
a  personal  devotion,  whom  I  could  dream  of  and  dote 
upon,  and  whom  I  could  offer  my  intimacy  in  many 
an  impassioned  revery.  I  do  not  think  T.  B.  Macau- 
lay  would  really  have  liked  it;  I  dare  say  he  would 
not  have  valued  the  friendship  of  the  sort  of  a  youth 
I  was,  but  in  the  conditions  he  was  helpless,  and  I 
poured  out  my  love  upon  him  without  a  rebuff.  Of 
course  I  reformed  my  prose  style,  which  had  been 
carefully  modeled  upon  that  of  Goldsmith  and  Irving, 
and  began  to  write  in  the  manner  of  Macaulay,  in 
short,  quick  sentences,  and  with  the  prevalent  use  of 
brief  Anglo-Saxon  words,  which  he  prescribed,  but 
did  not  practice.  As  for  his  notions  of  literature,  I 
simply  accepted  them  with  the  feeling  that  any  ques- 
tion of  them  would  have  been  little  better  than 
blasphemy. 

For  a  long  time  he  spoiled  my  taste  for  any  other 
criticism ;  he  made  it  seem  pale,  and  poor  and  weak ; 
and  he  blunted  my  sense  to  subtler  excellences  than  I 
found  in  him.  I  think  this  was  a  pity,  but  it  was  a 
thing  not  to  be  helped,  like  a  great  many  things  that 
happen  to  our  hurt  in  life ;  it  was  simply  inevitable. 
How  or  when  my  frenzy  for  him  began  to  abate  I 
cannot  say,  but  it  certainly  waned,  and  it  must  have 


118  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

waned  rapidly,  for  after  no  great  while  I  found  my- 
self feeling  the  charm  of  quite  different  minds,  as 
fully  as  if  his  had  never  enslaved  me.  I  cannot  regret 
that  I  enjoyed  him  so  keenly  as  1  did ;  it  was  in  a 
way  a  generous  delight,  and  though  he  swayed  me 
helplessly  whatever  way  he  thought,  I  do  not  think 
yet  that  he  swayed  me  in  any  very  wrong  way.  He 
was  a  bright  and  clear  intelligence,  and  if  his  light 
did  not  go  far,  it  is  to  be  said  of  him  that  his  worst 
fault  was  only  to  have  stopped  short  of  the  finest 
truth  in  art,  in  morals,  in  politics. 


XVIII. 

CRITICS  AND  REVIEWS. 

WHAT  remained  to  me  from  my  love  of  Macaulay 
was  a  love  of  reading  criticism,  and  I  read  almost  as 
much  in  criticism  as  I  read  in  poetry  and  history  and 
fiction.  It  was  of  an  eccentric  doctor,  another  of  the 
village  characters,  that  I  got  the  works  of  Edgar  A. 
Poe ;  I  do  not  know  just  how,  but  it  must  have  been 
in  some  exchange  of  books ;  he  preferred  metaphysics. 
At  any  rate  I  fell  greedily  upon  them,  and  I  read 
with  no  less  zest  than  his  poems  the  bitter,  and  cruel, 
and  narrow-minded  criticisms  which  mainly  filled  one 
of  the  volumes.  As  usual,  I  accepted  them  implicitly, 
and  it  was  not  till  long  afterward  that  I  understood 
how  worthless  they  were. 

I  think  that  hardly  less  immoral  than  the  lubricity 
of  literature,  and  its  celebration  of  the  monkey  and 
the  goat  in  us,  is  the  spectacle  it  affords  of  the  tiger- 


120  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

ish  play  of  satire.  It  is  monstrous  that  for  no  offense 
but  the  wish  to  produce  something  beautiful,  and  the 
mistake  of  his  powers  in  that  direction,  a  writer 
should  become  the  prey  of  some  ferocious  wit,  and 
that  his  tormentor  should  achieve  credit  by  his  light- 
ness and  ease  in  rending  his  prey  ;  it  is  shocking  to 
think  how  alluring  and  depraving  the  fact  is  to  the 
young  reader  emulous  of  such  credit,  and  eager  to 
achieve  it.  Because  I  admired  these  barbarities  of 
Foe's,  I  wished  to  imitate  them,  to  impale  some  hap- 
less victim  on  my  own  spear,  to  make  him  suffer  and 
to  make  the  reader  laugh.  This  is  as  far  as  possible 
from  the  criticism  that  enlightens  and  ennobles,  but  it 
is  still  the  ideal  of  most  critics,  deny  it  as  they  will ; 
and  because  it  is  the  ideal  of  most  critics  criticism 
still  remains  behind  all  the  other  literary  arts. 

I  am  glad  to  remember  that  at  the  same  time  I 
exulted  in  these  ferocities  I  had  mind  enough  and 
heart  enough  to  find  pleasure  in  the  truer  and  finer 
work,  the  humaner  work  of  other  writers,  like  Hazlitt, 
and  Leigh  Hunt  and  Lamb,  which  became  known  to 
me  at  a  date  I  cannot  exactly  fix.  I  believe  it  was 
Hazlitt  whom  I  read  first,  and  he  helped  me  to  clarify 
and  formulate  my  admiration  of  Shakespeare  as  no 
one  else  had  yet  done ;  Lamb  helped  me  too,  and  with 


CRITICS   AND   REVIEWS.  121 

all  the  dramatists,  and  on  every  hand  I  was  reaching 
out  for  light  that  should  enable  me  to  place  in  literary 
history  the  authors  I  knew  and  loved. 

I  fancy  it  was  well  for  me  at  this  period  to  have 
got  at  the  four  great  English  reviews,  the  Edinburgh, 
the  Westminster,  the  London  Quarterly  and  the 
North  British,  which  I  read  regularly,  as  well  as 
Blackwood's  Magazine.  We  got  them  in  the  Ameri- 
can editions  in  payment  for  printing  the  publisher's 
prospectus,  and  their  arrival  was  an  excitement,  a  joy 
and  a  satisfaction  with  me,  which  I  could  not  now  de- 
scribe without  having  to  accuse  myself  of  exaggera- 
tion. The  love  of  literature,  and  the  hope  of  doing 
something  in  it,  had  become  my  life  to  the  exclusion 
of  all  other  interests,  or  it  was  at  least  the  great 
reality,  and  all  other  things  were  as  shadows.  I  was 
living  in  a  time  of  high  political  tumult,  and  I  cer- 
tainly cared  very  much  for  the  question  of  slavery 
which  was  then  filling  the  minds  of  men ;  I  felt  deeply 
the  shame  and  wrong  of  our  Fugitive  Slave  Law ;  I 
was  stirred  by  the  news  from  Kansas,  where  the  great 
struggle  between  the  two  great  principles  in  our  na- 
tionality was  beginning  in  bloodshed  ;  but  I  cannot 
pretend  that  any  of  these  things  were  more  than  rip- 
ples on  the  surface  of  my  intense  and  profound 


122  MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

interest  in  literature.  If  I  was  not  to  live  by  it,  I  was 
somehow  to  live  for  it. 

If  I  thought  of  taking  up  some  other  calling  it  was 
as  a  means  only ;  literature  was  always  the  end  I  had 
in  view,  immediately  or  finally.  I  did  not  see  how  it 
was  to  yield  me  a  living,  for  I  knew  that  almost  all 
the  literary  men  in  the  country  had  other  professions ; 
they  were  editors,  lawyers,  or  had  public  or  private 
employments ;  or  they  were  men  of  wealth ;  there  was 
then  not  one  who  earned  his  bread  solely  by  his  pen 
in  fiction,  or  drama,  or  history,  or  poetry,  or  criticism, 
in  a  day  when  people  wanted  very  much  less  butter 
on  their  bread  than  they  do  now.  But  I  kept  blindly 
at  my  studies,  and  yet  not  altogether  blindly,  for,  as 
I  have  said,  the  reading  I  did  had  more  tendency  than 
before,  and  I  was  beginning  to  see  authors  in  their 
proportion  to  one  another,  and  to  the  body  of  litera- 
ture. 

The  English  reviews  were  of  great  use  to  me  in 
this  ;  I  made  a  rule  of  reading  each  one  of  them  quite 
through.  To  be  sure  I  often  broke  this  rule,  as  peo- 
ple are  apt  to  do  with  rules  of  the  kind  ;  it  was  not 
possible  for  a  boy  to  wade  through  heavy  articles  re- 
lating to  English  politics  and  economics,  but  I  do  not 
think  I  left  any  paper  upon  a  literary  topic  unread, 


CRITICS    AND    REVIEWS.  123 

and  I  did  read  enough  politics,  especially  in  Black- 
wood's,  to  be  of  Tory  opinions ;  they  were  very  fit 
opinions  for  a  boy,  and  they  did  not  exact  of  me  any 
change  in  regard  to  the  slavery  question. 


XIX. 

A  NON-LITERARY  EPISODE. 

I  SUPPOSE  I  might  almost  class  my  devotion  to 
English  reviews  among  my  literary  passions,  but  it 
was  of  very  short  lease,  not  beyond  a  year  or  two  at 
the  most.  In  the  midst  of  it  I  made  my  first  and  only 
essay  aside  from  the  lines  of  literature,  or  rather 
wholly  apart  from  it.  After  some  talk  with  my  father 
it  was  decided,  mainly  by  myself,  I  suspect,  that  I 
should  leave  the  printing-office  and  study  law ;  and  it 
was  arranged  with  the  United  States  Senator  who 
lived  in  our  village,  and  who  was  at  home  from  Wash- 
ington for  the  summer,  that  I  was  to  come  into  his 
office.  The  Senator  was  by  no  means  to  undertake 
my  instruction  himself ;  his  nephew,  who  had  just  be- 
gun to  read  law,  was  to  be  my  fellow-student,  and  we 
were  to  keep  each  other  up  to  the  work,  and  to  recite 
to  each  other,  until  we  thought  we  had  enough  law  to 


A    NON-LITERARY    EPISODE.  125 

go  before  a  board  of  attorneys  and  test  our  fitness  for 
admission  to  the  bar. 

This  was  the  custom  in  that  day  and  place,  as  I 
suppose  it  is  still  in  most  parts  of  the  country.  We 
were  to  be  fitted  for  practice  in  the  courts,  not  only  by 
our  reading,  but  by  a  season  of  pettifogging  before 
justices  of  the  peace,  which  I  looked  forward  to  with 
no  small  shrinking  of  my  shy  spirit ;  but  what  really 
troubled  me  most,  and  was  always  the  grain  of  sand 
between  my  teeth,  was  Blackstone's  confession  of  his 
own  original  preference  for  literature,  and  his  percep- 
tion that  the  law  was  "  a  jealous  mistress,"  who  would 
suffer  no  rival  in  his  affections.  I  agreed  with  him 
that  I  could  not  go  through  life  with  a  divided  inter- 
est ;  I  must  give  up  literature  or  I  must  give  up  law. 
I  not  only  consented  to  this  logically,  but  I  realized  it 
in  my  attempt  to  carry  on  the  reading  I  had  loved, 
and  to  keep  at  the  efforts  I  was  always  making  to 
write  something  in  verse  or  prose,  at  night,  after 
studying  law  all  day.  The  strain  was  great  enough 
when  I  had  merely  the  work  in  the  printing-office; 
but  now  I  came  home  from  my  Blackstone  mentally 
fagged,  and  I  could  not  take  up  the  authors  whom  at 
the  bottom  of  my  heart  I  loved  so  much  better.  I 
tried  it  a  month,  but  almost  from  the  fatal  day  when  I 


126  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

found  that  confession  of  Blackstone's,  my  whole  being 
turned  from  the  "  jealous  mistress"  to  the  high-minded 
muses. 

I  had  not  only  to  go  back  to  literature,  but  I  had 
also  to  go  back  to  the  printing-office.  I  did  not  regret 
it,  but  I  had  made  my  change  of  front  in  the  public 
eye,  and  I  felt  that  it  put  me  at  a  certain  disadvantage 
with  my  fellow-citizens;  as  for  the  Senator,  whose 
office  I  had  forsaken,  I  met  him  now  and  then  in  the 
street,  without  trying  to  detain  him,  and  once  when 
he  came  to  the  printing-office  for  his  paper  we  en- 
countered at  a  point  where  we  could  not  help  speak- 
ing. He  looked  me  over  in  my  general  effect  of  base 
mechanical,  and  asked  me  if  I  had  given  up  the  law ; 
I  had  only  to  answer  him  I  had,  and  our  conference 
ended. 

It  was  a  terrible  moment  for  me,  because  I  knew 
that  in  his  opinion  I  had  chosen  a  path  in  life,  which 
if  it  did  not  lead  to  the  Poor  House  was  at  least  no 
way  to  the  White  House.  I  suppose  now  that  he 
thought  I  had  merely  gone  back  to  my  trade,  and  so 
for  the  time  I  had ;  but  I  have  no  reason  to  suppose 
that  he  judged  my  case  narrow-mindedly,  and  I  ought 
to  have  had  the  courage  to  have  the  affair  out  with 
him,  and  tell  him  just  why  I  had  left  the  law ;  we  had 


A   NON-LITERARY    EPISODE.  127 

sometimes  talked  the  English  reviews  over,  for  he  read 
them  as  well  as  I,  and  it  ought  not  to  have  been  im- 
possihle  for  me  to  be  frank  with  him ;  but  as  yet  I 
could  not  trust  any  one  with  my  secret  hope  of  some 
day  living  for  literature,  although  I  had  already  lived 
for  nothing  else.  I  preferred  the  disadvantage  which 
I  must  be  at  in  his  eyes,  and  in  the  eyes  of  most  of 
my  fellow-citizens ;  I  believe  I  had  the  applause  of  the 
organ-builder,  who  thought  the  law  no  calling  for  me. 
In  that  village  there  was  a  social  equality  which,  if 
not  absolute,  was  as  nearly  so  as  can  ever  be  in  a  com- 
petitive civilization ;  and  I  could  have  suffered  no 
slight  in  the  general  esteem  for  giving  up  a  profession 
and  going  back  to  a  trade  ;  if  I  was  despised  at  all  it 
was  because  I  had  thrown  away  the  chance  of  material 
advancement;  I  dare  say  some  people  thought  I  was  a 
fool  to  do  that.  No  one,  indeed,  could  have  imagined 
the  rapture  it  was  to  do  it,  or  what  a  load  rolled  from 
my  shoulders  when  I  dropped  the  law  from  them. 
Perhaps  Sinbad  or  Christian  could  have  conceived  of 
my  ecstatic  relief;  yet  so  far  as  the  popular  vision 
reached  I  was  not  returning  to  literature,  but  to  the 
printing  business,  and  I  myself  felt  the  difference. 
My  reading  had  given  me  criterions  different  from 
those  of  the  simple  life  of  our  village,  and  I  did  not 


128  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

flatter  myself  that  my  calling  would  have  been  thought 
one  of  great  social  dignity  in  the  world  where  I  hoped 
some  day  to  make  my  living.  My  convictions  were 
all  democratic,  but  at  heart  I  am  afraid  I  was  a  snob, 
and  was  unworthy  of  the  honest  work  which  1  ought 
to  have  felt  it  an  honor  to  do ;  this,  whatever  we 
falsely  pretend  to  the  contrary,  is  the  frame  of  every 
one  who  aspires  beyond  the  work  of  his  hands.  I  do 
not  know  how  it  had  become  mine,  except  through  my 
reading,  and  I  think  it  was  through  the  devotion  I 
then  had  for  a  certain  author  that  I  came  to  a  knowl- 
edge not  of  good  and  evil  so  much  as  of  common  and 
superfine. 


XX. 

THACKERAY. 

IT  was  of  the  organ-builder  that  I  had  Thackeray's 
books  first.  He  knew  their  literary  quality,  and  their 
rank  in  the  literary  world ;  but  I  believe  he  was  sur- 
prised at  the  passion  I  instantly  conceived  for  them. 
He  could  not  understand  it ;  he  deplored  it  almost  as 
a  moral  defect  in  me  ;  though  he  honored  it  as  a  proof 
of  my  critical  taste.  In  a  certain  measure  he  was 
right. 

What  flatters  the  worldly  pride  in  a  young  man  is 
what  fascinates  him  with  Thackeray.  With  his  air  of 
looking  down  on  the  highest,  and  confidentially  in- 
viting you  to  be  of  his  company  in  the  seat  of  the 
scorner  he  is  irresistible ;  his  very  confession  that  he 
is  a  snob,  too,  is  balm  and  solace  to  the  reader  who 
secretly  admires  the  splendors  he  affects  to  despise. 
His  sentimentality  is  also  dear  to  the  heart  of  youth, 
I 


130  MY  LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

and  the  boy  who  is  dazzled  by  his  satire  is  melted  by 
his  easy  pathos.  Then,  if  the  boy  has  read  a  good 
many  other  books,  he  is  taken  with  that  abundance  of 
literary  turn  and  allusion  in  Thackeray  ;  there  is  hardly 
a  sentence  but  reminds  him  that  he  is  in  the  society 
of  a  great  literary  swell,  who  has  read  everything,  and 
can  mock  or  burlesque  life  right  and  left  from  the  lit- 
erature always  at  his  command.  At  the  same  time  he 
feels  his  mastery,  and  is  abjectly  grateful  to  him  in 
his  own  simple  love  of  the  good  for  his  patronage  of 
the  unassuming  virtues.  It  is  so  pleasing  to  one's 
vanity,  and  so  safe,  to  be  of  the  master's  side  when  he 
assails  those  vices  and  foibles  which  are  inherent  in 
the  system  of  things,  and  which  one  can  contemn  with 
vast  applause  so  long  as  one  does  not  attempt  to  undo 
the  conditions  they  spring  from. 

I  exulted  to  have  Thackeray  attack  the  aristocrats, 
and  expose  their  wicked  pride  and  meanness,  and  I 
never  noticed  that  he  did  not  propose  to  do  away  with 
aristocracy,  which  is  and  must  always  be  just  what  it 
has  been,  and  which  cannot  be  changed  while  it  exists 
at  all.  He  appeared  to  me  one  of  the  noblest  crea- 
tures that  ever  was  when  he  derided  the  shams  of  so- 
ciety ;  and  I  was  far  from  seeing  that  society,  as  we 
have  it,  was  necessarily  a  sham;  when  he  made  a 


THACKERAY.  131 

mock  of  snobbishness  I  did  not  know  but  snobbish- 
ness was  something  that  might  be  reached  and  cured 
by  ridicule.  Now  I  know  that  so  long  as  we  have  so- 
cial inequality  we  shall  have  snobs ;  we  shall  have  men 
who  bully  and  truckle,  and  women  who  snub  and 
crawl.  I  know  that  it  is  futile  to  spurn  them,  or  lash 
them  for  trying  to  get  on  in  the  world,  and  that  the 
world  is  what  it  must  be  from  the  selfish  motives 
which  underlie  our  economic  life.  But  I  did  not  know 
these  things  then,  nor  for  long  afterward,  and  so  I 
gave  my  heart  to  Thackeray,  who  seemed  to  promise 
me  in  his  contempt  of  the  world  a  refuge  from  the 
shame  I  felt  for  my  own  want  of  figure  in  it.  He  had 
the  effect  of  taking  me  into  the  great  world,  and  mak- 
ing me  a  party  to  his  splendid  indifference  to  titles, 
and  even  to  royalties ;  and  I  could  not  see  that  sham 
for  sham  he  was  unwittingly  the  greatest  sham  of  all. 
I  think  it  was  Pendennis  I  began  with,  and  I  lived 
in  the  book  to  the  very  last  line  of  it,  and  made  its 
alien  circumstance  mine  to  the  smallest  detail.  I  am 
still  not  sure  but  it  is  the  author's  greatest  book,  and 
I  speak  from  a  thorough  acquaintance  with  every  line 
he  has  written,  except  the  Virginians,  which  I  have 
never  been  able  to  read  quite  through ;  most  of  his 
work  I  have  read  twice,  and  some  of  it  twenty  times. 


132  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

After  reading  Pendennis  I  went  to  Vanity  Fair, 
which  I  now  think  the  poorest  of  Thackeray's  novels 
— crude,  heavy-handed,  caricatured.  About  the  same 
time  I  reveled  in  the  romanticism  of  Henry  Esmond, 
with  its  pseudo- eighteenth-century  sentiment,  and  its 
appeals  to  an  overwrought  ideal  of  gentlemanhood 
and  honor.  It  was  long  before  I  was  duly  revolted 
by  Esmond's  transfer  of  his  passion  from  the  daughter 
to  the  mother  whom  he  is  successively  enamoured  of. 
I  believe  this  unpleasant  and  preposterous  affair  is 
thought  one  of  the  fine  things  in  the  story ;  I  do  not 
mind  owning  that  I  thought  it  so  myself  when  I  was 
seventeen ;  and  if  I  could  have  found  a  Beatrix  to  be 
in  love  with,  and  a  Lady  Castlewood  to  be  in  love 
with  me,  I  should  have  asked  nothing  finer  of  fortune. 
The  glamour  of  Henry  Esmond  was  all  the  deeper 
because  I  was  reading  the  Spectator  then,  and  was 
constantly  in  the  company  of  Addison  and  Steele,  and 
Swift,  and  Pope,  and  all  the  wits  at  Will's,  who  are 
presented  evanescently  in  the  romance.  The  intensely 
literary  keeping,  as  well  as  quality,  of  the  story  I  sup- 
pose is  what  formed  its  highest  fascination  for  me; 
but  that  effect  of  great  world  which  it  imparts  to  the 
reader,  making  him  citizen,  and,  if  he  will,  leading  cit- 
izen of  it,  was  what  helped  turn  my  head. 


THACKERAY.  133 

This  is  the  toxic  property  of  all  Thackeray's  writ- 
ing. He  is  himself  forever  dominated  in  imagination 
by  the  world,  and  even  while  he  tells  you  it  is  not 
worth  while  he  makes  you  feel  that  it  is  worth  while. 
It  is  not  the  honest  man,  but  the  man  of  honor,  who 
shines  in  his  page ;  his  meek  folk  are  proudly  meek, 
and  there  is  a  touch  of  superiority,  a  glint  of  mundane 
splendor,  in  his  lowliest.  He  rails  at  the  order  of 
things,  but  he  imagines  nothing  different,  even  when 
he  shows  that  its  baseness,  and  cruelty,  and  hypocrisy 
are  well-nigh  inevitable,  and, for  most  of  those  who 
wish  to  get  on  in  it,  quite  inevitable.  He  has  a  good 
word  for  the  virtues,  he  patronizes  the  Christian 
graces,  he  pats  humble  merit  on  the  head ;  he  has  even 
explosions  of  indignation  against  the  insolence  and 
pride  of  birth,  and  purse-pride.  But,  after  all,  he  is 
of  the  world,  worldly,  and  the  highest  hope  he  holds 
out  is  that  you  may  be  in  the  world  and  despise  its 
ambitions  while  you  compass  its  ends. 

I  should  be  far  from  blaming  him  for  all  this.  He 
was  of  his  time ;  but  since  his  time  men  have  thought 
beyond  him,  and  seen  life  with  a  vision  which  makes 
his  seem  rather  purblind.  He  must  have  been  im- 
mensely in  advance  of  most  of  the  thinking  and  feeling 
of  his  day,  for  people  then  used  to  accuse  his  senti- 


134:  MY   LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

mental  pessimism  of  cynical  qualities  which  we  could 
hardly  find  in  it  now.  It  was  the  age  of  intense  in- 
dividualism, when  you  were  to  do  right  because  it 
was  becoming  to  you,  say,  as  a  gentleman,  and  you 
were  to  have  an  eye  single  to  the  effect  upon  your 
character,  if  not  your  reputation ;  you  were  not  to  do 
a  mean  thing  because  it  was  wrong,  but  because  it 
was  mean.  It  was  romanticism  carried  into  the  region 
of  morals.  But  I  had  very  little  concern  then  as  to 
that  sort  of  error. 

I  was  on  a  very  high  aesthetic  horse,  which  I  could 
not  have  conveniently  stooped  from  if  I  had  wished ; 
it  was  quite  enough  for  me  that  Thackeray's  novels 
were  prodigious  works  of  art,  and  I  acquired  merit,  at 
least  with  myself,  for  appreciating  them  so  keenly,  for 
liking  them  so  much.  It  must  be,  I  felt  with  far  less 
consciousness  than  my  formulation  of  the  feeling  ex- 
presses, that  I  was  'of  some  finer  sort  myself  to  be 
able  to  enjoy  such  a  fine  sort.  No  doubt  I  should 
have  been  a  coxcomb  of  some  kind,  if  not  that  kind, 
and  I  shall  not  be  very  strenuous  in  censoring  Thack- 
eray for  his  effect  upon  me  in  this  way.  No  doubt 
the  effect  was  already  in  me,  and  he  dijl  not  so  much 
produce  it  as  find  it. 

In  the  meantime  he  was  a  vast  delight  to  me,  as 


THACKERAY.  135 

much  in  the  variety  of  his  minor  works, — his  Yellow- 
plush,  and  Betters  of  Mr.  Brown,  and  Adventures  of 
Major  Gahagan,  and  the  Paris  Sketch  Book,  and  the 
Irish  Sketch  Book,  and  the  Great  Hoggarty  Diamond, 
and  the  Book  of  Snobs,  and  the  English  Humorists, 
and  the  Four  Georges,  and  all  the  multitude  of  his 
essays,  and  verses,  and  caricatures, — as  in  the  spacious 
designs  of  his  huge  novels,  the  Newcomes,  and  Pen- 
dennis,  and  Vanity  Fair,  and  Henry  Esmond,  and 
Barry  Lyndon. 

There  was  something  in  the  art  of  the  last  which 
seemed  to  me  then,  and  still  seems,  the  farthest  reach 
of  the  author's  great  talent.  It  is  couched,  like  so 
much  of  his  work,  in  the  autobiographic  form,  which 
next  to  the  dramatic  form  is  the  most  natural,  and 
which  lends  itself  with  such  flexibility  to  the  purpose 
of  the  author.  In  Barry  Lyndon  there  is  imagined  to 
the  life  a  scoundrel  of  such  rare  quality  that  he  never 
supposes  for  a  moment  but  he  is  the  finest  sort  of  a 
gentleman ;  and  so,  in  fact,  he  was,  as  most  gentlemen 
went  in  his  day.  Of  course,  the  picture  is  overcol- 
ored ;  it  was  the  vice  of  Thackeray,  or  of  Thackeray's 
time,  to  surcharge  all  imitations  of  life  and  character, 
so  that  a  generation  apparently  much  slower,  if  not 
duller  than  ours,  should  not  possibly  miss  the  artist's 


136  MY    LITEEARY    PASSIONS. 

meaning.  But  I  do  not  think  it  is  so  much  surcharged 
as  Esmond ;  Barry  Lyndon  is  by  no  manner  of  means 
so  conscious  as  that  mirror  of  gentlemanhood,  with  its 
manifold  self-reverberations;  and  for  these  reasons  I 
am  inclined  to  think  he  is  the  most  perfect  creation  of 
Thackeray's  mind. 

I  did  not  make  the  acquaintance  of  Thackeray's 
books  all  at  once,  or  even  in  rapid  succession,  and  he 
at  no  time  possessed  the  whole  empire  of  my  catholic, 
not  to  say  fickle,  affections,  during  the  years  I  was 
compassing  a  full  knowledge  and  sense  of  his  great- 
ness, and  burning  incense  at  his  shrine.  But  there 
was  a  moment  when  he  so  outshone  and  overtopped 
all  other  divinities  in  my  worship  that  I  was  effect- 
ively his  alone,  as  I  have  been  the  helpless  and,  as  it 
were,  hypnotized  devotee  of  three  or  four  others  of 
the  very  great.  From  his  art  there  flowed  into  me  a 
literary  quality  which  tinged  my  whole  mental  sub- 
stance, and  made  it  impossible  for  me  to  say,  or  wish 
to  say,  anything  without  giving  it  the  literary  color. 
That  is,  while  he  dominated  my  love  and  fancy,  if  I 
had  been  so  fortunate  as  to  have  a  simple  concept  of 
anything  in  life,  I  must  have  tried  to  give  the  expres- 
sion of  it  some  turn  or  tint  that  would  remind  the 
reader  of  books  even  before  it  reminded  him  of  men. 


THACKERAY.  187 

It  is  hard  to  make  out  what  I  mean,  but  this  is  a 
try  at  it,  and  I  do  not  know  that  I  shall  be  able  to  do 
better  unless  I  add  that  Thackeray,  of  all  the  writers 
that  I  have  known,  is  the  most  thoroughly  and  pro- 
foundly imbued  with  literature,  so  that  when  he  speaks 
it  is  not  with  words  and  blood,  but  with  words  and 
ink.  You  may  read  the  greatest  part  of  Dickens,  as 
you  may  read  the  greatest  part  of  Hawthorne  or  Tol- 
stoy, and  not  once  be  reminded  of  literature  as  a 
business  or  a  cult,  but  you  can  hardly  read  a  para- 
graph, hardly  a  sentence, of  Thackeray's  without  being 
reminded  of  it  either  by  suggestion  or  downright  al- 
lusion. 

I  do  not  blame  him  for  this ;  he  was  himself,  and  he 
could  not  have  been  any  other  manner  of  man  without 
loss;  but  I  say  that  the  greatest  talent  is  not  that 
which  breathes  of  the  library,  but  that  which  breathes 
of  the  street,  the  field,  the  open  sky,  the  simple  earth. 
I  began  to  imitate  this  master  of  mine  almost  as  soon 
as  I  began  to  read  him ;  this  must  be,  and  I  had  a 
greater  pride  and  joy  in  my  success  than  I  should 
probably  have  known  in  anything  really  creative;  I 
should  have  suspected  that,  I  should  have  distrusted 
that,  because  I  had  nothing  to  test  it  by,  no  model ; 
but  here  before  me  was  the  very  finest  and  noblest 


138  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

model,  and  I  had  but  to  form  my  lines  upon  it,  and  I 
had  produced  a  work  of  art  altogether  more  estimable 
in  my  eyes  than  anything  else  could  have  been.  I 
saw  the  little  world  about  me  through  the  lenses  of 
my  master's  spectacles,  and  I  reported  its  facts,  in 
his  tone  and  his  attitude,  with  his  self-flattered  scorn, 
his  showy  sighs,  his  facile  satire.  I  need  not  say  I 
was  perfectly  satisfied  with  the  result,  or  that  to  be 
able  to  imitate  Thackeray  was  a  much  greater  thing 
for  me  than  to  have  been  able  to  imitate  nature.  In 
fact,  I  could  have  valued  any  picture  of  the  life  and 
character  I  knew  only  as  it  put  me  in  mind  of  life  and 
character  as  these  had  shown  themselves  to  me  in  his 
books. 


XXI. 

LAZARILLO  DE  TORMES. 

AT  the  same  time,  I  was  not  only  reading  many 
books  besides  Thackeray's,  but  I  was  studying  to  get 
a  smattering  of  several  languages  as  well  as  I  could, 
with  or  without  help.  I  could  now  manage  Spanish 
fairly  well,  and  I  was  sending  on  to  New  York  for 
authors  in  that  tongue.  I  do  not  remember  how  I 
got  the  money  to  buy  them  ;  to  be  sure  it  was  no  great 
sum ;  but  it  must  have  been  given  me  out  of  the  sums 
we  were  all  working  so  hard  to  make  up  for  the  debt, 
and  the  interest  on  the  debt  (that  is  always  the  wicked 
pinch  for  the  debtor!), we  had  incurred  in  the  pur- 
chase of  the  newspaper  which  we  lived  by,  and  the 
house  which  we  lived  in.  I  spent  no  money  on  any 
other  sort  of  pleasure,  and  so,  I  suppose,  it  was  af- 
forded me  the  more  readily ;  but  I  cannot  really  recall 
the  history  of  those  acquisitions  on  its  financial  side. 


140  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

In  any  case,  if  the  sums  I  laid  out  in  literature  could 
not  have  been  comparatively  great,  the  excitement 
attending  the  outlay  was  prodigious. 

I  know  that  I  used  to  write  on  to  Messrs.  Roe 
Lockwood  <fc  Son,  New  York,  for  my  Spanish  books, 
and  I  dare  say  that  my  letters  were  sufficiently  pe- 
dantic, and  filled  with  a  simulated  acquaintance  with 
all  Spanish  literature.  Heaven  knows  what  they  must 
have  thought,  if  they  thought  anything,  of  their  queer 
customer  in  that  obscure  little  Ohio  village;  but  he 
could  not  have  been  queerer  to  them  than  to  his  fel- 
low-villagers, I  am  sure.  I  haunted  the  post-office 
about  the  time  the  books  were  due,  and  when  I  found 
one  of  them  in  our  deep  box  among  a  heap  of  ex- 
change newspapers  and  business  letters,  my  emotion 
was  so  great  that  it  almost  took  my  breath.  I  hurried 
home  with  the  precious  volume,  and  shut  myself  into 
my  little  den,  where  I  gave  myself  up  to  a  sort  of 
transport  in  it.  These  books  were  always  from  the 
collection  of  Spanish  authors  published  by  Baudry  in 
Paris,  and  they  were  in  saffron-colored  paper  covers, 
printed  full  of  a  perfectly  intoxicating  catalogue  of 
other  Spanish  books  which  I  meant  to  read,  every  one, 
some  time.  The  paper  and  the  ink  had  a  certain  odor 
which  was  sweeter  to  me  than  the  perfumes  of  Araby. 


LAZARILLO    DE    TORMES.  141 

The  look  of  the  type  took  me  more  than  the  glance  of 
a  girl,  and  I  had  a  fever  of  longing  to  know  the  heart 
of  the  book,  which  was  like  a  lover's  passion.  Some- 
times I  did  not  reach  its  heart,  but  commonly  I  did. 
Moratin's  Origins  of  the  Spanish  Theatre,  and  a  large 
volume  of  Spanish  dramatic  authors,  were  the  first 
Spanish  books  I  sent  for,  but  I  could  not  say  why  I 
sent  for  them,  unless  it  was  because  I  saw  that  there 
were  some  plays  of  Cervantes  among  the  rest.  I  read 
these  and  I  read  several  comedies  of  Lope  de  Vega, 
and  numbers  of  archaic  dramas  in  Moratin's  history, 
and  I  really  got  a  fairish  perspective  of  the  Spanish 
drama,  which  has  now  almost  wholly  faded  from  my 
mind.  It  is  more  intelligible  to  me  why  I  should  have 
read  Conde's  Dominion  of  the  Arabs  in  Spain ;  for 
that  was  in  the  line  of  my  reading  in  Irving,  which 
would  account  for  my  pleasure  in  the  History  of  the 
Civil  Wars  of  Granada ;  it  was  some  time  before  I 
realized  that  the  chronicles  in  this  were  a  bundle  of  ro- 
mances and  not  veritable  records ;  and  my  whole  study 
in  these  things  was  wholly  undirected  and  unenlight- 
ened. But  I  meant  to  be  thorough  in  it,  and  I  could 
not  rest  satisfied  with  the  Spanish-English  grammars 
I  had ;  I  was  not  willing  to  stop  short  of  the  official 
grammar  of  the  Spanish  Academy.  I  sent  to  New 


142  MY   LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

York  for  it,  and  my  bookseller  there  reported  that 
they  would  have  to  send  to  Spain  for  it.  I  lived  till 
it  came  to  hand  through  them  from  Madrid ;  and  I  do 
not  understand  why  I  did  not  perish  then  from  the 
pride  and  joy  I  had  in  it. 

But,  after  all,  I  am  not  a  Spanish  scholar,  and  can 
neither  speak  nor  write  the  language.  I  never  got  more 
than  a  good  reading  use  of  it,  perhaps  because  I  never 
really  tried  for  more.  But  I  am  very  glad  of  that, 
because  it  has  been  a  great  pleasure  to  me,  and  even 
some  profit,  and  it  has  lighted  up  many  meanings  in 
literature,  which  must  always  have  remained  dark  to 
me.  Not  to  speak  now  of  the  modern  Spanish  writers 
whom  it  has  enabled  me  to  know  in  their  own  houses 
as  it  were,  I  had  even  in  that  remote  day  a  rapturous 
delight  in  a  certain  Spanish  book,  which  was  well 
worth  all  the  pains  I  had  undergone  to  get  at  it.  This 
was  the  famous  picaresque  novel,  Lazarillo  de  Tormes, 
by  Hurtado  de  Mendoza,  whose  name  then  so  famil- 
iarized itself  to  my  fondness  that  now  as  I  write  it  I 
feel  as  if  it  were  that  of  an  old  personal  friend  whom 
I  had  known  in  the  flesh.  I  believe  it  would  not  have 
been  always  comfortable  to  know  Mendoza  outside  of 
his  books ;  he  was  rather  a  terrible  person ;  he  was 
one  of  the  Spanish  invaders  of  Italy,  and  is  known  in 


LAZARILLO    DE    TORMES.  143 

Italian  history  as  the  Tyrant  of  Siena.  But  at  my 
distance  of  time  and  place  I  could  safely  revel  in  his 
friendship,  and  as  an  author  I  certainly  found  him  a 
most  charming  companion.  The  adventures  of  his 
rogue  of  a  hero,  who  began  life  as  the  servant  and  ac- 
complice of  a  blind  beggar,  and  then  adventured  on 
through  a  most  diverting  career  of  knavery,  brought 
back  the  atmosphere  of  Don  Quixote,  and  all  the  land- 
scape of  that  dear  wonder-world  of  Spain,  where  I 
had  lived  so  much,  and  I  followed  him  with  all  the 
old  delight. 

I  do  not  know  that  I  should  counsel  others  to  do 
so,  or  that  the  general  reader  would  find  his  account 
in  it,  but  I  am  sure  that  the  intending  author  of 
American  fiction  would  do  well  to  study  the  Spanish 
picaresque  novels ;  for  in  their  simplicity  of  design  he 
will  find  one  of  the  best  forms  for  an  American  story. 
The  intrigue  of  close  texture  will  never  suit  our  con- 
ditions, which  are  so  loose  and  open  and  variable; 
each  man's  life  among  us  is  a  romance  of  the  Spanish 
model,  if  it  is  the  life  of  a  man  who  has  risen,  as  we 
nearly  all  have,  with  many  ups  and  downs.  The  story 
of  Lazarillo  is  gross  in  its  facts,  and  is  mostly  "  un- 
meet for  ladies,"  like  most  of  the  fiction  in  all  lan- 
guages before  our  times ;  but  there  is  an  honest  sim- 


144  MY     LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

plicity  in  the  narration,  a  pervading  humor,  and  a  rich 
feeling  for  character  that  gives  it  value. 

I  think  that  a  good  deal  of  its  foulness  was  lost 
upon  me,  but  I  certainly  understood  that  it  would  not 
do  to  present  it  to  an  American  public  just  as  it  was, 
in  the  translation  which  I  presently  planned  to  make. 
I  went  about  telling  the  story  to  people,  and  trying  to 
make  them  find  it  as  amusing  as  I  did,  but  whether  I 
ever  succeeded  I  cannot  say,  though  the  notion  of  a 
version  with  modifications  constantly  grew  with  me, 
till  one  day  I  went  to  the  city  of  Cleveland  with  my 
father.  There  was  a  branch  house  of  an  Eastern  firm 
of  publishers  in  that  place,  and  I  must  have  had  the 
hope  that  I  might  have  the  courage  to  propose  a  trans- 
lation of  Lazarillo  to  them.  My  father  urged  me  to 
try  my  fortune,  but  my  heart  failed  me.  I  was  half 
blind  with  one  of  the  headaches  that  tormented  me  in 
those  days,  and  I  turned  my  sick  eyes  from  the  sign, 
"  J.  P.  Jewett  &  Co.,  Publishers,"  which  held  me  fas- 
cinated, and  went  home  without  at  least  having  my 
much-dreamed-of  version  of  Lazarillo  refused. 


XXII. 

CURTIS,  LONGFELLOW,  SCHLEGEL. 

I  AM  quite  at  a  loss  to  know  why  my  reading  had 
this  direction  or  that  in  those  days.  It  had  necessa- 
rily passed  beyond  my  father's  suggestion,  and  I  think 
it  must  have  been  largely  by  accident  or  experiment 
that  I  read  one  book  rather  than  another.  He  made 
some  sort  of  newspaper  arrangement  with  a  book- 
store in  Cleveland,  which  was  the  means  of  enriching 
our  home  library  with  a  goodly  number  of  books, 
shopworn,  but  none  the  worse  for  that,  and  new  in 
the  only  way  that  books  need  be  new  to  the  lover  of 
them.  Among  these  I  found  a  treasure  in  Curtis's 
two  books,  the  Nile  Notes  of  a  Howadji,  and  the 
Howadji  in  Syria.  I  already  knew  him  by  his  Poti- 
phar  Papers,  and  the  ever-delightful  reveries  which 
have  since  gone  under  the  name  of  Prue  and  I;  but 
those  books  of  Eastern  travel  opened  a  new  world  of 
K 


146  MY   LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

thinking  and  feeling.  They  had  at  once  a  great  influ- 
ence upon  me.  The  smooth  richness  of  their  diction ; 
the  amiable  sweetness  of  their  mood,  their  gracious 
caprice,  the  delicacy  of  their  satire  (which  was  so  kind 
that  it  should  have  some  other  name),  their  abundance 
of  light  and  color,  and  the  deep  heart  of  humanity 
underlying  their  airiest  fantasticality,  all  united  in  an 
effect  which  was  different  from  any  I  had  yet  known. 
As  usual,  I  steeped  myself  in  them,  and  the  first 
runnings  of  my  fancy  when  I  began  to  pour  it  out 
afterward  were  of  their  flavor.  I  tried  to  write  like 
this  new  master;  but  whether  I  had  tried  or  not,  I 
should  probably  have  done  so  from  the  love  I  bore 
him.  As  I  have  hinted,  he  was  already  a  favorite  of 
mine,  and  of  all  the  young  people  in  the  village  who 
were  reading  current  literature,  so  that  on  this  ground 
at  least  I  had  abundant  sympathy.  The  present  gen- 
eration can  have  little  notion  of  the  deep  impression 
made  upon  the  intelligence  and  conscience  of  the  whole 
nation  by  the  Potiphar  Papers,  or  how  its  fancy  was 
rapt  with  the  Prue  and  I  sketches.  These  are  among 
the  most  veritable  literary  successes  we  have  had,  and 
probably  we  who  were  so  glad  when  the  author  of 
these  beautiful  things  turned  aside  from  the  flowery 
paths  where  he  led  us,  to  battle  for  freedom  in  the 


CURTIS,    LONGFELLOW,    SCHLEGEL.  147 

field  of  politics,  would  have  felt  the  sacrifice  too  great 
if  we  could  have  dreamed  it  would  be  life-long.  But, 
as  it  was,  we  could  only  honor  him  the  more,  and  give 
him  a  place  in  our  hearts  which  he  shares  with  Long- 
fellow alone. 

This  divine  poet  I  have  never  ceased  to  read.  His 
Hiawatha  was  a  new  book  during  one  of  those  terrible 
Lake  -Shore  winters,  but  all  the  other  poems  were  old 
friends  with  me  by  that  time.  With  a  sister  who  is 
no  longer  living  I  had  a  peculiar  devotion  for  his  pretty 
and  touching  and  lightly  humorous  tale  of  Kavanagh, 
which  was  of  a  village  life  enough  like  our  own,  in 
some  things,  to  make  us  know  the  truth  of  its  deli- 
cate realism.  We  used  to  read  it  and  talk  it  fondly 
over  together,  and  I  believe  some  stories  of  like  make 
and  manner  grew  out  of  our  pleasure  in  it.  They 
were  never  finished,  but  it  was  enough  'to  begin  them, 
and  there  were  few  writers,  if  any,  among  those  I 
delighted  in  who  escaped  the  tribute  of  an  imitation. 
One  has  to  begin  that  way,  or  at  least  one  had  in  my 
day ;  perhaps  it  is  now  possible  for  a  young  writer 
to  begin  by  being  himself ;  but  for  my  part,  that  was 
not  half  so  important  as  to  be  like  some  one  else. 
Literature,  not  life,  was  my  aim,  and  to  reproduce  it 
was  my  joy  and  my  pride. 


148  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

I  was  widening  my  knowledge  of  it  helplessly  and 
involuntarily,  and  I  was  always  chancing  upon  some 
book  that  served  this  end  among  the  great  number  of 
books  that  I  read  merely  for  my  pleasure  without  any 
real  result  of  the  sort.  Schlegel's  Lectures  on  Dra- 
matic Literature  came  into  my  hands  not  long  after  I 
had  finished  my  studies  in  the  history  of  the  Spanish 
theatre,  and  it  made  the  whole  subject  at  once  lumin- 
ous. I  cannot  give  a  due  notion  of  the  comfort  this 
book  afforded  me  by  the  light  it  cast  upon  paths  where 
I  had  dimly  made  my  way  before,  but  which  I  now 
followed  in  the  full  day. 

Of  course,  I  pinned  my  faith  to  everything  that 
Schlegel  said.  I  obediently  despised  the  classic  unities 
and  the  French  and  Italian  theatre  which  had  perpet- 
uated them,  and  I  revered  the  romantic  drama  which 
had  its  glorious  course  among  the  Spanish  and  Eng- 
lish poets,  and  which  was  crowned  with  the  fame  of 
the  Cervantes  and  the  Shakespeare  whom  I  seemed  to 
own,  they  owned  me  so  completely.  It  vexes  me  now 
to  find  that  I  cannot  remember  how  the  book  came  in- 
to my  hands,  or  who  could  have  suggested  it  to  me. 
It  is  possible  that  it  may  have  been  that  artist  who 
came  and  stayed  a  month  with  us  while  she  painted 
my  mother's  portrait.  She  was  fresh  from  her  studies 


CURTIS,    LONGFELLOW,    SCHLEGEL.  149 

in  New  York,  where  she  had  met  authors  and  artists 
at  the  house  of  the  Carey  sisters,  and  had  even  once 
seen  my  adored  Curtis  somewhere,  though  she  had 
not  spoken  with  him.  Her  talk  about  these  things 
simply  emparadised  me ;  it  lifted  me  into  a  heaven  of 
hope  that  I,  too,  might  some  day  meet  such  elect  spir- 
its and  converse  with  them  face  to  face.  My  mood 
was  sufficiently  foolish,  but  it  was  not  such  a  frame  of 
mind  as  I  can  be  ashamed  of ;  and  I  could  wish  a  boy 
no  happier  fortune  than  to  possess  it  for  a  time,  at 
least. 


XXIII. 
TENNYSON. 

I  CANNOT  quite  see  now  how  I  found  time  for  even 
trying  to  do  the  things  I  had  in  hand  more  or  less. 
It  is  perfectly  clear  to  me  that  I  did  none  of  them 
well,  though  I  meant  at  the  time  to  do  none  of  them 
other  than  excellently.  I  was  attempting  the  study  of 
no  less  than  four  languages,  and  I  presently  added  a 
fifth  to  these.  I  was  reading  right  and  left  in  every 
direction,  but  chiefly  in  that  of  poetry,  criticism  and 
fiction.  From  time  to  time  I  boldly  attacked  a  his- 
tory, and  carried  it  by  a  coup  de  main,  or  sat  down 
before  it  for  a  prolonged  siege.  There  was  occasion- 
ally an  author  who  worsted  me,  whom  I  tried  to  read 
and  quietly  gave  up  after  a  vain  struggle,  but  I  must 
say  that  these  authors  were  few.  I  had  got  a  very 
fair  notion  of  the  range  of  all  literature,  and  the  rela- 
tions of  the  different  literatures  to  one  another,  and  I 


TENNYSON.  151 

knew  pretty  well  what  manner  of  book  it  was  that  I 
took  up  before  I  committed  myself  to  the  task  of 
reading  it.  Always  I  read  for  pleasure,  for  the  delight 
of  knowing  something  more ;  and  this  pleasure  is  a 
very  different  thing  from  amusement,  though  I  read  a 
great  deal  for  mere  amusement,  as  I  do  still,  and  to 
take  my  mind  away  from  unhappy  or  harassing 
thoughts.  There  are  very  few  things  that  I  think  it  a 
waste  of  time  to  have  read ;  I  should  probably  have 
wasted  the  time  if  I  had  not  read  them,  and  at  the 
period  I  speak  of  I  do  not  think  I  wasted  much  time. 
My  day  began  about  seven  o'clock,  in  the  printing- 
office,  where  it  took  me  till  noon  to  do  my  task  of  so 
many  thousand  ems,  say  four  or  five.  Then  we  had 
dinner,  after  the  simple  fashion  of  people  who  work 
with  their  hands  for  their  dinners.  In  the  afternoon 
I  went  back  and  corrected  the  proof  of  the  type  I  had 
set  and  distributed  my  case  for  the  next  day.  At 
two  or  three  o'clock  I  was  free,  and  then  I  went  home 
and  began  my  studies ;  or  tried  to  write  something ; 
or  read  a  book.  We  had  supper  at  six,  and  after  that 
I  rejoiced  in  literature,  till  I  went  to  bed  at  ten  or 
eleven.  I  cannot  think  of  any  time  when  I  did  not  go 
gladly  to  my  books  or  manuscripts,  when  it  was  not  a 
noble  joy  as  well  as  a  high  privilege. 


152  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

But  it  all  ended  as  such  a  strain  must,  in  the  sort 
of  break  which  was  not  yet  known  as  nervous  prostra- 
tion. When  I  could  not  sleep  after  my  studies,  and 
the  sick  headaches  came  oftener,  and  then  days  and 
weeks  of  hypochondriacal  misery,  it  was  apparent  I 
was  not  well ;  but  that  was  not  the  day  of  anxiety  for 
such  things,  and  if  it  was  thought  best  that  I  should 
leave  work  and  study  for  a  while,  it  was  not  with  the 
notion  that  the  case  was  at  all  serious,  or  needed  an 
uninterrupted  cure.  I  passed  days  in  the  woods  and 
fields,  gunning  or  picking  berries ;  I  spent  myself  in 
heavy  work ;  I  made  little  journeys ;  and  all  this  was 
very  wholesome  and  very  well ;  but  I  did  not  give  up 
my  reading  or  my  attempts  to  write.  No  doubt  I  was 
secretly  proud  to  have  been  invalided  in  so  great  a 
cause,  and  to  be  sicklied  over  with  the  pale  cast  of 
thought,  rather  than  by  some  ignoble  ague  or  the  de- 
vastating consumption  of  that  region.  If  I  lay  awake, 
noting  the  wild  pulsations  of  my  heart,  and  listening 
to  the  death-watch  in  the  wall,  I  was  certainly  very 
much  scared,  but  I  was  not  without  the  consolation 
that  I  was  at  least  a  sufferer  for  literature.  At  the 
same  time  that  I  was  so  horribly  afraid  of  dying,  I 
could  have  composed  an  epitaph  which  would  have 
moved  others  to  tears  for  my  untimely  fate.  But  there 


TENNYSON.  153 

was  really  no  impairment  of  my  constitution,  and  after 
a  while  I  began  to  be  better,  and  little  by  little  the 
health  which  has  never  since  failed  me  under  any  rea- 
sonable stress  of  work  established  itself. 

I  was  in  the  midst  of  this  unequal  struggle  when  I 
first  became  acquainted  with  the  poet  who  at  once 
possessed  himself  of  what  was  best  worth  having  in 
me.  Probably  I  knew  of  Tennyson  by  extracts,  and 
from  the  English  reviews,  but  I  believe  it  was  from 
reading  one  of  Curtis's  Easy  Chair  papers  that  I  was 
prompted  to  get  the  new  poem  of  Maud,  which  I  un- 
derstood from  the  Easy  Chair  was  then  moving  polite 
youth  in  the  East.  It  did  not  seem  to  me  that  I  could 
very  well  live  without  that  poem,  and  when  I  went  to 
Cleveland  with  the  hope  that  I  might  have  courage  to 
propose  a  translation  of  Lazarillo  to  a  publisher  it  was 
with  the  fixed  purpose  of  getting  Maud  if  it  was  to  be 
found  in  any  bookstore  there. 

I  do  not  know  why  I  was  so  long  in  reaching  Ten- 
nyson, and  I  can  only  account  for  it  by  the  fact  that 
I  was  always  reading  rather  the  earlier  than  the  later 
English  poetry.  To  be  sure  I  had  passed  through 
what  I  may  call  a  paroxysm  of  Alexander  Smith,  a 
poet  deeply  unknown  to  the  present  generation,  but 
then  acclaimed  immortal  by  all  the  critics,  and  put 


154  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

with  Shakespeare,  who  must  be  a  good  deal  astonished 
from  time  to  time  in  his  Elysian  quiet  by  the  compan- 
ionship thrust  upon  him.  I  read  this  now  dead-and- 
gone  immortal  with  an  ecstasy  unspeakable;  I  raved 
of  him  by  day,  and  dreamed  of  him  by  night;  I  got 
great  lengths  of  his  Life-Drama  by  heart,  and  I  can 
still  repeat  several  gorgeous  passages  from  it;  I  would 
almost  have  been  willing  to  take  the  life  of  the  sole 
critic  who  had  the  sense  to  laugh  at  him,  and  who 
made  his  wicked  fun  in  Graham's  Magazine,  an  extinct 
periodical  of  the  old  extinct  Philadelphia!!  species. 
I  cannot  tell  how  I  came  out  of  this  craze,  but  neither 
could  any  of  the  critics  who  led  me  into  it,  I  dare  say. 
The  reading  world  is  very  susceptible  of  such  lunacies, 
and  all  that  can  be  said  is  that  at  a  given  time  it  was 
time  for  criticism  to  go  mad  over  a  poet  who  was 
neither  better  nor  worse  than  many  another  third-rate 
poet  apotheosized  before  and  since.  What  was  good 
in  Smith  was  the  reflected  fire  of  the  poets  who  had 
a  vital  heat  in  them  ;  and  it  was  by  mere  chance  that 
I  bathed  myself  in  his  second-hand  effulgence.  I  al- 
ready knew  pretty  well  the  origin  of  the  Tennysonian 
line  in  English  poetry;  Wordsworth,  and  Keats, and 
Shelley ;  and  I  did  not  come  to  Tennyson's  worship  a 
sudden  convert,  but  my  devotion  to  him  was  none  the 


TENNYSON.  155 

less  complete  and  exclusive.  Like  every  other  great 
poet  he  somehow  expressed  the  feelings  of  his  day, 
and  I  suppose  that  at  the  time  he  wrote  Maud  he  said 
more  fully  what  the  whole  English-speaking  race  were 
then  dimly  longing  to  utter  than  any  English  poet 
who  has  lived. 

One  need  not  question  the  greatness  of  Browning 
in  owning  the  fact  that  the  two  poets  of  his  day  who 
pre-eminently  voiced  their  generation  were  Tennyson 
and  Longfellow ;  though  Browning,  like  Emerson,  is 
probably  now  more  modern  than  either.  However,  I 
had  then  nothing  to  do  with  Tennyson's  comparative 
claim  on  my  adoration ;  there  was  for  the  time  no  par- 
allel for  him  in  the  whole  range  of  literary  divinities 
that  I  had  bowed  the  knee  to.  For  that  while,  the 
temple  was  not  only  emptied  of  all  the  other  idols, 
but  I  had  a  richly  flattering  illusion  of  being  his  only 
worshiper.  When  I  came  to  the  sense  of  this  error, 
it  was  with  the  belief  that  at  least  no  one  else  had 
ever  appreciated  him  so  fully,  stood  so  close  to  him 
in  that  holy  of  holies  where  he  wrought  his  miracles. 

I  say  tawdrily  and  ineffectively  and  falsely  what 
was  a  very  precious  and  sacred  experience  with  me. 
This  great  poet  opened  to  me  a  whole  world  of  think- 
ing and  feeling,  where  I  had  my  being  with  him  in 


156  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

that  mystic  intimacy  which  cannot  be  put  into  words. 
I  at  once  identified  myself  not  only  with  the  hero  of 
the  poem,  but  in  some  sort  with  the  poet  himself, 
when  I  read  Maud ;  but  that  was  only  the  first  step 
toward  the  lasting  state  in  which  his  poetry  has  upon 
the  whole  been  more  to  me  than  that  of  any  other 
poet.  I  have  never  read  any  other  so  closely  and 
continuously,  or  read  myself  so  much  into  and  out  of 
his  verse.  There  have  been  times  and  moods  when  I 
have  had  my  questions,  and  made  my  cavils,  and  when 
it  seemed  to  me  that  the  poet  was  less  than  I  had 
thought  him;  and  certainly  I  do  not  revere  equally 
and  unreservedly  all  that  he  has  written ;  that  would 
be  impossible.  But  when  I  think  over  all  the  other 
poets  I  have  read,  he  is  supreme  above  them  in  his 
response  to  some  need  in  me  that  he  has  satisfied  so 
perfectly. 

Of  course,  Maud  seemed  to  me  the  finest  poem  I 
had  read,  up  to  that  time,  but  I  am  not  sure  that  this 
conclusion  was  wholly  my  own ;  I  think  it  was  par- 
tially formed  for  me  by  the  admiration  of  the  poem 
which  I  felt  to  be  everywhere  in  the  critical  atmos- 
phere, and  which  had  already  penetrated  to  me.  I 
did  not  like  all  parts  of  it  equally  well,  and  some  parts 
of  it  seemed  thin  and  poor  (though  I  would  not  suffer 


TENNYSON.  157 

myself  to  say  so  then),  and  they  still  seem  so.  But 
there  were  whole  passages  and  spaces  of  it  whose  di- 
vine and  perfect  beauty  lifted  me  above  life.  I  did 
not  fully  understand  the  poem  then ;  I  do  not  fully 
understand  it  now,  but  that  did  not  and  does  not  mat- 
ter ;  for  there  is  something  in  poetry  that  reaches  the 
soul  by  other  avenues  than  the  intelligence.  Both  in 
this  poem  and  others  of  Tennyson,  and  in  every  poet 
that  I  have  loved,  there  are  melodies  and  harmonies 
enfolding  a  significance  that  appeared  long  after  I  had 
first  read  them,  and  had  even  learned  them  by  heart ; 
that  lay  sweetly  in  my  outer  ear  and  were  enough  in 
their  mere  beauty  of  phrasing,  till  the  time  came  for 
them  to  reveal  their  whole  meaning.  In  fact  they 
could  do  this  only  to  later  and  greater  knowledge  of 
myself  and  others,  as  every  one  must  recognize  who 
recurs  in  after-life  to  a  book  that  he  read  when  young ; 
then  he  finds  it  twice  as  full  of  meaning  as  it  was  at 
first. 

I  could  not  rest  satisfied  with  Maud ;  I  sent  the 
same  summer  to  Cleveland  for  the  little  volume  which 
then  held  all  the  poet's  work,  and  abandoned  myself 
so  wholly  to  it,  that  for  a  year  I  read  no  other  verse 
that  I  can  remember.  The  volume  was  the  first  of 
that  pretty  blue-and-gold  series  which  Ticknor  & 


158  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

Fields  began  to  publish  in  1856,  and  which  their  im- 
print, so  rarely  affixed  to  an  unworthy  book,  at  once 
carried  far  and  wide.  Their  modest  old  brown  cloth 
binding  had  long  been  a  quiet  warrant  of  quality  in 
the  literature  it  covered,  and  now  this  splendid  blos- 
som of  the  book-making  art,  as  it  seemed,  was  fitly 
employed  to  convey  the  sweetness  and  richness  of  the 
loveliest  poetry  that  I  thought  the  world  had  yet 
known.  After  an  old  fashion  of  mine,  I  read  it  con- 
tinuously, with  frequent  recurrences  from  each  new 
poem  to  some  that  had  already  pleased  me,  and  with 
a  most  capricious  range  among  the  pieces.  In  Me- 
moriam  was  in  that  book,  and  the  Princess ;  I  read 
the  Princess  through  and  through,  and  over  and  over, 
but  I  did  not  then  read  In  Memoriam  through,  and  I 
have  never  read  it  in  course  ;  I  am  not  sure  that  I  have 
even  yet  read  every  part  of  it.  I  did  not  come  to  the 
Princess,  either,  until  I  had  saturated  my  fancy  and 
my  memory  with  some  of  the  shorter  poems,  with  the 
Dream  of  Fair  Women,  with  the  Lotus  Eaters,  with 
the  Miller's  Daughter,  with  the  Morte  d' Arthur,  with 
Edwin  Morris  or  The  Lake,  with  Love  and  Duty,  and 
a  score  of  other  minor  and  briefer  poems.  I  read  the 
book  night  and  day,  indoors  and  out,  to  myself  and  to 
whomever  I  could  make  listen.  I  have  no  words  to 


TENNYSON.  159 

tell  the  rapture  it  was  to  me ;  but  I  hope  that  in  some 
more  articulate  being,  if  it  should  ever  be  my  unmer- 
ited fortune  to  meet  that  sommo  poeta  face  to  face,  it 
shall  somehow  be  uttered  from  me  to  him,  and  he  will 
understand  how  completely  he  became  the  life  of  the 
boy  I  was  then.  I  think  it  might  please,  or  at  least 
amuse,  that  lofty  ghost,  and  that  he  would  not  resent 
it,  as  he  would  probably  have  done  on  earth.  I  can 
well  understand  why  the  homage  of  his  worshipers 
should  have  afflicted  him  here,  and  I  could  never  have 
been  one  to  burn  incense  in  his  presence  ;  but  perhaps 
it  might  be  done  hereafter  without  offense.  I  eagerly 
caught  up  and  treasured  every  personal  word  I  could 
find  about  him,  and  I  dwelt  in  that  sort  of  charmed 
intimacy  with  him  through  his  verse,  in  which  I 
could  not  presume  nor  he  repel,  and  which  I  had  en- 
joyed in  turn  with  Cervantes  and  Shakespeare,  with- 
out a  snub  from  them. 

I  have  never  ceased  to  adore  Tennyson,  though  the 
rapture  of  the  new  convert  could  not  last.  That  must 
pass  like  the  flush  of  any  other  passion.  I  think  I 
have  now  a  better  sense  of  his  comparative  greatness, 
but  a  better  sense  of  his  positive  greatness  I  could  not 
have  than  I  had  at  the  beginning ;  and  I  believe  this 
is  the  essential  knowledge  of  a  poet.  It  is  very  well 


160  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

to  say  one  is  greater  than  Keats,  or  not  so  great  as 
Wordsworth ;  that  one  is  or  is  not  of  the  highest  or- 
der of  poets  like  Shakespeare  and  Dante  and  Goethe ; 
but  that  does  not  mean  anything  of  value,  and  I  never 
find  my  account  in  it.  I  know  it  is  not  possible  for 
any  less  than  the  greatest  writer  to  abide  lastingly  in 
one's  life.  Some  dazzling  comer  may  enter  and  pos- 
sess it  for  a  day,  but  he  soon  wears  his  welcome  out, 
and  presently  finds  the  door,  to  be  answered  with  a 
not-at-home  if  he  knocks  again.  But  it  was  only  this 
morning  that  I  read  one  of  the  new  last  poems  of 
Tennyson  with  a  return  of  the  emotion  which  he  first 
woke  in  me  well-nigh  forty  years  ago.  There  has  been 
no  year  of  those  many  when  I  have  not  read  him  and 
loved  him  with  something  of  the  early  fire  if  not  all 
the  early  conflagration ;  and  each  successive  poem  of 
his  has  been  for  me  a  fresh  joy. 

He  went  with  me  into  the  world  from  my  village 
when  I  left  it  to  make  my  first  venture  away  from 
home.  My  father  had  got  one  of  those  legislative 
clerkships  which  used  to  fall  sometimes  to  deserving 
country  editors  when  their  party  was  in  power,  and 
we  together  imagined  and  carried  out  a  scheme  for 
corresponding  with  some  city  newspapers.  We  were 
to  furnish  a  daily  letter  giving  an  account  of  the  legis- 


TENNYSON.  161 

lative  proceedings,  which  I  was  mainly  to  write  up 
from  material  he  helped  me  to  get  together.  The  let- 
ters at  once  found  favor  with  the  editors  who  agreed 

o 

to  take  them,  and  my  father  then  withdrew  from  the 
work  altogether,  after  telling  them  who  was  doing  it. 
We  were  afraid  they  might  not  care  for  the  reports  of 
a  boy  of  nineteen,  but  they  did  not  seem  to  take  my 
age  into  account,  and  I  did  not  boast  of  my  youth 
among  the  law-makers.  I  had  a  mustache  that  came 
early  and  black,  and  I  looked  three  or  four  years  older 
than  I  was ;  but  I  experienced  a  terrible  moment  once 
when  a  fatherly  Senator  asked  me  my  age.  I  got 
away  somehow  without  saying,  but  it  was  a  great  re- 
lief to  me  when  my  twentieth  birthday  came  that  win- 
ter, and  I  could  honestly  proclaim  that  I  was  in  my 
twenty-first  year. 

I  had  now  the  free  range  of  the  State  Library,  and 
I  drew  many  sorts  of  books  from  it.  Largely,  how- 
ever, they  were  fiction,  and  I  read  all  the  novels  of 
Bulwer,  for  whom  I  had  already  a  great  liking  from 
The  Caxtons  and  My  Novel.  I  was  dazzled  by  them, 
and  I  thought  him  a  great  writer,  if  not  so  great  a  one 
as  he  thought  himself.  Little  or  nothing  of  those  ro- 
mances, with  their  swelling  prefaces  about  the  poet 
and  his  function,  their  glittering  criminals,  and  showy 
L 


162  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

rakes  and  rogues  of  all  kinds,  and  their  patrician  per- 
fume and  social  splendor,  remained  with  me ;  they  may 
have  been  better  or  worse ;  I  will  not  attempt  to  say. 
If  I  may  call  my  fascination  with  them  a  passion  at  all, 
I  must  say  that  it  was  but  a  fitful  fever.  I  also  read 
many  volumes  of  Zschokke's  admirable  tales,  which  I 
found  in  a  translation  in  the  Library,  and  I  think  I 
began  at  the  same  time  to  find  out  De  Quincey.  These 
authors  I  recall  out  of  the  many  that  passed  through 
my  mind  almost  as  tracelessly  as  they  passed  through 
my  hands.  I  got  at  some  versions  of  Icelandic  poems, 
in  the  metre  of  Hiawatha ;  I  had  for  a  while  a  notion 
of  studying  Icelandic,  and  I  did  take  out  an  Icelandic 
grammar  and  lexicon,  and  decided  that  I  would  learn 
the  language  later.  By  this  time  I  must  have  begun 
German,  which  I  afterward  carried  so  far,  with  one 
author  at  least,  as  to  find  in  him  a  delight  only  second 
to  that  I  had  in  Tennyson ;  but  as  yet  Tennyson  was 
all  in  all  to  me  in  poetry.  I  suspect  that  I  carried  his 
poems  about  with  me  a  great  part  of  the  time ;  I  am 
certain  that  I  always  had  that  blue-and-gold  Tennyson 
in  my  pocket ;  and  I  was  ready  to  draw  it  upon  any- 
body at  the  slightest  provocation.  This  is  the  worst  of 
the  ardent  lover  of  literature :  he  wishes  to  make  every 
one  else  share  his  rapture,  will  he,  nill  he.  Many  good 


TENNYSON.  163 

fellows  suffered  from  my  admiration  of  this  author  or 
that,  and  many  more  pretty,  patient  maids.  I  wanted 
to  read  my  favorite  passages,  my  favorite  poems  to 
them ;  I  am  afraid  I  often  did  read,  when  they  would 
rather  have  been  talking ;  in  the  case  of  the  poems  I 
did  worse,  I  repeated  them.  This  seems  rather  in- 
credible now,  but  it  is  true  enough,  and  absurd  as  it 
is,  it  at  least  attests  my  sincerity.  It  was  long  before 
I  cured  myself  of  so  pestilent  a  habit ;  and  I  am  not 
yet  so  perfectly  well  of  it  that  I  could  be  safely  trusted 
with  a  fascinating  book  and  a  submissive  listener. 

I  dare  say  I  could  not  have  been  made  to  under- 
stand at  this  time  that  Tennyson  was  not  so  nearly 
the  first  interest  of  life  with  other  people  as  he  was 
with  me ;  I  must  often  have  suspected  it,  but  I  was 
helpless  against  the  wish  to  make  them  feel  him  as 
important  to  their  prosperity  and  well-being  as  he  was 
to  mine.  My  head  was  full  of  him ;  his  words  were 
always  behind  my  lips ;  and  when  I  was  not  repeating 
his  phrase  to  myself  or  to  some  one  else,  I  was  trying 
to  frame  something  of  my  own  as  like  him  as  I  could. 
It  was  a  time  of  o  melancholy  from  ill-health,  and  of 
anxiety  for  the  future  in  which  I  must  make  my  own 
place  in  the  world.  Work,  and  hard  work,  I  had 
always  been  used  to  and  never  afraid  of ;  but  work  is 


164  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

by  no  means  the  whole  story.  You  may  get  on  with- 
out much  of  it,  or  you  may  do  a  great  deal,  and  not 
get  on.  I  was  willing  to  do  as  much  of  it  as  I  could 
get  to  do,  but  I  distrusted  my  health,  somewhat,  and 
I  had  many  forebodings,  which  my  adored  poet  helped 
me  to  transfigure  to  the  substance  of  literature,  or  en- 
abled me  for  the  time  to  forget.  I  was  already  imi- 
tating him  in  the  verse  I  wrote ;  he  now  seemed  the 
only  worthy  model  for  one  who  meant  to  be  as  great 
a  poet  as  I  did.  None  of  the  authors  whom  I  read  at 
all  displaced  him  in  my  devotion,  and  I  could  not  have 
believed  that  any  other  poet  would  ever  be  so  much  to 
me.  In  fact,  as  I  have  expressed,  none  ever  has  been. 


XXIV. 

HEINE. 

THAT  winter  passed  very  quickly  and  happily  for 
me,  and  at  the  end  of  the  legislative  session  I  had 
acquitted  myself  so  much  to  the  satisfaction  of  one  of 
the  newspapers  which  I  wrote  for  that  I  was  offered  a 
place  on  it.  I  was  asked  to  be  city  editor,  as  it  was 
called  in  that  day,  and  I  was  to  have  charge  of  the 
local  reporting.  It  was  a  great  temptation,  and  for  a 
while  I  thought  it  the  greatest  piece  of  good  fortune. 
I  went  down  to  Cincinnati  to  acquaint  myself  with  the 
details  of  the  work,  and  to  fit  myself  for  it  by  begin- 
ning as  reporter  myself.  One  night's  round  of  the 
police  stations  with  the  other  reporters  satisfied  me 
that  I  was  not  meant  for  that  work,  and  I  attempted 
it  no  farther.  I  have  often  been  sorry  since,  for  it 
would  have  made  known  to  me  many  phases  of  life 
that  I  have  always  remained  ignorant  of,  but  I  did  not 


166  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

know  then  that  life  was  supremely  interesting  and  im- 
portant. I  fancied  that  literature,  that  poetry  was  so ; 
and  it  was  humiliation  and  anguish  indescribable  to 
think  of  myself  torn  from  my  high  ideals  by  labors 
like  those  of  the  reporter.  I  would  not  consent  even 
to  do  the  office  work  of  the  department,  so  much  had 
I  a  soul  above  buttons,  and  the  proprietor  and  editor 
who  was  more  especially  my  friend  tried  to  make 
some  other  place  for  me.  All  the  departments  were 
full  but  the  one  I  would  have  nothing  to  do  with,  and 
after  a  few  weeks  of  sufferance  and  suffering  I  turned 
my  back  on  a  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  for  the  sec- 
ond time  returned  to  the  printing-office. 

I  was  glad  to  get  home,  for  I  had  been  all  the  time 
tormented  by  my  old  malady  of  homesickness.  But 
otherwise  the  situation  was  not  cheerful  for  me,  and  I 
now  began  trying  to  write  something  for  publication 
that  I  could  sell.  I  sent  off  poems  and  they  came 
back ;  I  offered  little  translations  from  the  Spanish 
that  nobody  wanted.  At  the  same  time  I  took  up  the 
study  of  German,  which  I  must  have  already  played 
with,  at  such  odd  times  as  I  could  find.  My  father 
knew  something  of  it,  and  that  friend  of  mine  among 
the  printers  was  already  reading  it  and  trying  to 
speak  it.  I  had  their  help  with  the  first  steps  so  far 


HEINE.  167 

as  the  recitations  from  Ollendorff  were  concerned,  but 
I  was  impatient  to  read  German,  or  rather  to  read  one 
German  poet  who  had  seized  my  fancy  from  the  first 
line  of  his  I  had  seen. 

This  poet  was  Heinrich  Heine,  who  dominated  me 
longer  than  any  one  author  that  I  have  known.  Where 
or  when  I  first  acquainted  myself  with  his  most  fasci- 
nating genius,  I  cannot  be  sure,  but  I  think  it  was  in 
some  article  of  the  Westminster  Review,  where  several 
poems  of  his  were  given  in  English  and  German ;  and 
their  singular  beauty  and  grace  at  once  possessed  my 
soul.  I  was  in  a  fever  to  know  more  of  him,  and  it 
was  my  great  good  luck  to  fall  in  with  a  German  in 
the  village  who  had  his  books.  He  was  a  bookbinder, 
one  of  those  educated  artisans  whom  the  revolutions  of 
1848  sent  to  us  in  great  numbers.  He  was  a  Hano- 
verian, and  his  accent  was  then,  I  believe,  the  standard, 
though  the  Berlinese  is  now  the  accepted  pronuncia- 
tion. But  I  cared  very  little  for  accent ;  my  wish  was 
to  get  at  Heine  with  as  little  delay  as  possible  ;  and  I 
began  to  cultivate  the  friendship  of  that  bookbinder 
in  every  way.  I  dare  say  he  was  glad  of  mine,  for  he 
was  otherwise  quite  alone  in  the  village,  or  had  no 
companionship  outside  of  his  own  family.  I  clothed 
him  in  all  the  romantic  interest  I  began  to  feel  for  his 


168  MY     LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

race  and  language,  which  now  took  the  place  of  the 
Spaniards  and  Spanish  in  my  affections.  He  was  a 
very  quick  and  gay  intelligence,  with  more  sympathy 
for  my  love  of  our  author's  humor  than  for  my  love 
of  his  sentiment,  and  I  can  remember  very  well  the 
twinkle  of  his  little  sharp  black  eyes,  with  their  Tar- 
tar slant,  and  the  twitching  of  his  keenly-pointed,  sen- 
sitive nose,  when  we  came  to  some  passage  of  biting 
satire,  or  some  phrase  in  which  the  bitter  Jew  had 
unpacked  all  the  insult  of  his  soul. 

We  began  to  read  Heine  together  when  my  vocab- 
ulary had  to  be  dug  almost  word  by  word  out  of  the 
dictionary,  for  the  bookbinder's  English  was  rather 
scanty  at  the  best,  and  was  not  literary.  As  for  the 
grammar,  I  was  getting  that  up  as  fast  as  I  could 
from  Ollendorff,  and  from  other  sources,  but  I  was 
enjoying  Heine  before  I  well  knew  a  declension  or  a 
conjugation.  As  soon  as  my  task  was  done  at  the 
office,  I  went  home  to  the  books,  and  worked  away  at 
them  until  supper.  Then  my  bookbinder  and  I  met 
in  my  father's  editorial  room,  and  with  a  couple  of 
candles  on  the  table  between  us,  and  our  Heine  and 
the  dictionary  before  us,  we  read  till  we  were  both 
tired  out. 

The  candles  were  tallow,  and  they  lopped  at  differ- 


HEINE.  169 

ent  angles  in  the  flat  candle-sticks,  heavily  loaded  with 
lead,  which  compositors  once  used.  It  seems  to  have 
been  summer  when  our  readings  began,  and  they  are 
associated  in  my  memory  with  the  smell  of  the  neigh- 
boring gardens,  which  came  in  at  the  open  doors  and 
windows,  and  with  the  fluttering  of  moths,  and  bumb- 
ling of  the  dorbugs,  that  stole  in  along  with  the  odors. 
I  can  see  the  perspiration  on  the  shining  forehead  of 
the  bookbinder  as  he  looks  up  from  some  brilliant 
passage,  to  exchange  a  smile  of  triumph  with  me  at 
having  made  out  the  meaning  with  the  meagre  facil- 
ities we  had  for  the  purpose  ;  he  had  beautiful  red 
pouting  lips,  and  a  stiff  little  branching  mustache 
above  them,  that  went  to  the  making  of  his  smile. 
Sometimes,  in  the  truce  we  made  with  the  text,  he 
told  a  little  story  of  his  life  at  home,  or  some  anecdote 
relevant  to  our  reading,  or  quoted  a  passage  from 
some  other  author.  It  seemed  to  me  the  make  of  a 
high  intellectual  banquet,  and  I  should  be  glad  if  I 
could  enjoy  anything  as  much  now. 

We  walked  home  as  far  as  his  house,  or  rather  his 
apartment  over  one  of  the  village  stores  ;  and  as  he 
mounted  to  it  by  an  outside  staircase,  we  exchanged 
a  joyous  "Gute  Nacht,"  and  I  kept  on  homeward 
through  the  dark  and  silent  village  street,  which  was 


170  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS.   c 

really  not  that  street,  but  some  other,  where  Heine 
had  been,  some  street  out  of  the  Reisebilder,  of  his 
knowledge  or  of  his  dream.  When  I  reached  home 
it  was  useless  to  go  to  bed.  I  shut  myself  into  my 
little  study,  and  went  over  what  we  had  read,  till  my 
brain  was  so  full  of  it  that  when  I  crept  up  to  my 
room  at  last,  it  was  to  lie  down  to  slumbers  which 
were  often  a  mere  phantasmagory  of  those  witching 
Pictures  of  Travel. 

I  was  awake  at  my  father's  call  in  the  morning,  and 
before  my  mother  had  breakfast  ready  I  had  recited 
my  lesson  in  Ollendorff  to  him.  To  tell  the  truth  I 
hated  those  grammatical  studies,  and  nothing  but  the 
love  of  literature,  and  the  hope  of  getting  at  it,  could 
ever  have  made  me  go  through  them.  Naturally,  I 
never  got  any  scholarly  use  of  the  languages  I  was 
worrying  at,  and  though  I  could  once  write  a  passable 
literary  German,  it  has  all  gone  from  me  now,  except 
for  the  purposes  of  reading.  It  cost  me  so  much 
trouble,  however,  to  dig  the  sense  out  of  the  grammar 
and  lexicon,  as  I  went  on  with  the  authors  I  was  im- 
patient to  read,  that  I  remember  the  words  very  well 
in  all  their  forms  and  inflections,  and  I  have  still  what 
I  think  I  may  call  a  fair  German  vocabulary. 

The  German  of  Heine, when  once  you  are  in  the 


HEINE.  171 

joke  of  his  capricious  genius,  is  very  simple,  and  in 
his  poetry  it  is  simple  from  the  first,  so  that  he 
was,  perhaps,  the  best  author  I  could  have  fallen  in 
with  if  I  wanted  to  go  fast  rather  than  far.  I  found 
this  out  later,  when  I  attempted  other  German  authors 
without  the  glitter  of  his  wit  or  the  lambent  glow  of 
his  fancy  to  light  me  on  my  hard  way.  I  should  find 
it  hard  to  say  just  why  his  peculiar  genius  had  such 
an  absolute  fascination  for  me  from  the  very  first,  and 
perhaps  I  had  better  content  myself  with  saying  sim- 
ply that  my  literary  liberation  began  with  almost  the 
earliest  word  from  him ;  for  if  he  chained  me  to  him- 
self he  freed  me  from  all  other  bondage.  I  had  been 
at  infinite  pains  from  time  to  time,  now  upon  one 
model  and  now  upon  another,  to  literarify  myself,  if 
I  may  make  a  word  which  does  not  quite  say  the  thing 
for  me.  What  I  mean  is  that  I  had  supposed,  with 
the  sense  at  times  that  I  was  all  wrong,  that  the 
expression  of  literature  must  be  different  from  the 
expression  of  life ;  that  it  must  be  an  attitude,  a  pose, 
with  something  of  state  or  at  least  of  formality  in  it ; 
that  it  must  be  this  style,  and  not  that ;  that  it  must 
be  like  that  sort  of  acting  which  you  know  is  acting 
when  you  see  it  and  never  mistake  for  reality.  There 
are  a  great  many  children,  apparently  grown-up,  and 


172  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

largely  accepted  as  critical  authorities,  who  are  still 
of  this  youthful  opinion  of  mine.  But  Heine  at  once 
showed  me  that  this  ideal  of  literature  was  false ;  that 
the  life  of  literature  was  from  the  springs  of  the  best 
common  speech,  and  that  the  nearer  it  could  be  made 
to  conform,  in  voice,  look  and  gait,  to  graceful,  easy, 
picturesque  and  humorous  or  impassioned  talk,  the 
better  it  was. 

He  did  not  impart  these  truths  without  imparting 
certain  tricks  with  them,  which  I  was  careful  to  imi- 
tate as  soon  as  I  began  to  write  in  his  manner,  that  is 
to  say  instantly.  His  tricks  he  had  mostly  at  second- 
hand, and  mainly  from  Sterne,  whom  I  did  not  know 
well  enough  then  to  know  their  origin.  But  in  all  es- 
sentials he  was  himself,  and  my  final  lesson  from  him, 
or  the  final  effect  of  all  my  lessons  from  him,  was  to 
find  myself,  and  to  be  for  good  or  evil  whatsoever  I 
really  was. 

I  kept  on  writing  as  much  like  Heine  as  I  could  for 
several  years,  though,  and  for  a  much  longer  time  than 
I  should  have  done  if  I  had  ever  become  equally  im- 
passioned of  any  other  author.  Some  traces  of  his 
method  lingered  so  long  in  my  work  that  nearly  ten 
years  afterward  Mr.  Lowell  wrote  me  about  something 
of  mine  that  he  had  been  reading:  "  You  must  sweat 


HEINE.  173 

the  Heine  out  of  your  bones  as  men  do  mercury,"  and 
his  kindness  for  me  would  not  be  content  with  less 
than  the  entire  expulsion  of  the  poison  that  had  in  its 
good  time  saved  my  life.  I  dare  say  it  was  all  well 
enough  not  to  have  it  in  my  bones  after  it  had  done 
its  office,  but  it  did  do  its  office. 

It  was  in  some  prose  sketch  of  mine  that  his  keen 
analysis  had  found  the  Heine,  but  the  foreign  prop- 
erty had  been  so  prevalent  in  my  earlier  work  in  verse 
that  he  kept  the  first  contribution  he  accepted  from 
me  for  the  Atlantic  Monthly  a  long  time,  or  long 
enough  to  make  sure  that  it  was  not  a  translation  of 
Heine.  Then  he  printed  it,  and  I  am  bound  to  say 
that  the  poem  now  justifies  his  doubt  to  me,  insomuch 
that  I  do  not  see  why  Heine  should  not  have  had  the 
name  of  writing  it  if  he  had  wanted.  His  potent  spir- 
it became  immediately  so  wholly  my  "  control,"  as  the 
mediums  say,  that  my  poems  might  as  well  have  been 
communications  from  him  so  far  as  any  authority  of 
my  own  was  concerned;  and  they  were  quite  like 
other  inspirations  from  the  other  world  in  being  so 
inferior  to  the  work  of  the  spirit  before  it  had  the 
misfortune  to  be  disembodied  and  obliged  to  use  a 
medium.  Bat  I  do  not  think  that  either  Heine  or  I 
had  much  lasting  harm  from  it,  and  I  am  sure  that 


174  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

the  good,  in  my  case  at  least,  was  one  that  can  only 
end  with  me.  He  undid  my  hands,  which  I  had  taken 
so  much  pains  to  tie  behind  my  back,  and  he  forever 
persuaded  me  that  though  it  may  be  ingenious  and 
surprising  to  dance  in  chains,  it  is  neither  pretty  nor 
useful. 


XXY. 

DE  QUINCEY,  GOETHE,  LONGFELLOW. 

ANOTHER  author  who  was  a  prime  favorite  with  me 
about  this  time  was  De  Quincey,  whose  books  I  took 
out  of  the  State  Library,  one  after  another,  until  I  had 
read  them  all.  We  who  were  young  people  of  that 
day  thought  his  style  something  wonderful,  and  so  in- 
deed it  was,  especially  in  those  passages,  abundant 
everywhere  in  his  work,  relating  to  his  own  life  with 
an  intimacy  which  was  always  more  rather  than  less. 
His  rhetoric  there,  and  in  certain  of  his  historical 
studies,  had  a  sort  of  luminous  richness,  without  los- 
ing its  colloquial  ease.  I  keenly  enjoyed  this  subtle 
spirit,  and  the  play  of  that  brilliant  intelligence  which 
lighted  up  so  many  ways  of  literature  with  its  lambent 
glow  or  its  tricksy  glimmer,  and  I  had  a  deep  sympa- 
thy with  certain  morbid  moods  and  experiences  so  like 
my  own,  as  I  was  pleased  to  fancy.  I  have  not  looked 


176  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

at  his  Twelve  Caesars  for  twice  as  many  years,  but  I 
should  be  greatly  surprised  to  find  it  other  than  one  of 
the  greatest  historical  monographs  ever  written.  His 
literary  criticisms  seemed  to  me  not  only  exquisitely 
humorous,  but  perfectly  sane  and  just;  and  it  de- 
lighted me  to  have  him  personally  present,  with  the 
warmth  of  his  own  temperament  in  regions  of  cold 
abstraction ;  I  am  not  sure  that  I  should  like  that  so 
much  now.  De  Quincey  was  hardly  less  autobiograph- 
ical when  he  wrote  of  Kant,  or  Flight  of  the  Grim-Tar- 
tars, than  when  he  wrote  of  his  own  boyhood  or  the 
miseries  of  the  opium  habit.  He  had  the  hospitable 
gift  of  making  you  at  home  with  him,  and  appealing 
to  your  sense  of  comradery  with  something  of  the 
flattering  confidentiality  of  Thackeray,  but  with  a 
wholly  different  effect. 

In  fact,  although  De  Quincey  was  from  time  to  time 
perfunctorily  Tory,  and  always  a  good  and  faithful 
subject,  he  was  so  eliminated  from  his  time  and  place 
by  his  single  love  for  books,  that  one  could  be  in  his 
company  through  the  whole  vast  range  of  his  writings, 
and  come  away  without  a  touch  of  snobbishness ;  and 
that  is  saying  a  great  deal  for  an  English  writer.  He 
was  a  great  little  creature,  and  through  his  intense 
personality  he  achieved  a  sort  of  impersonality,  so 


DE    QUINCEY,    GOETHE,    LONGFELLOW.        177 

that  you  loved  the  man,  who  was  forever  talking  of 
himself,  for  his  modesty  and  reticence.  He  left  you 
feeling  intimate  with  him  but  by  no  means  familiar ; 
with  all  his  frailties,  and  with  all  those  freedoms  he 
permitted  himself  with  the  lives  of  his  contemporaries, 
he  is  to  me  a  figure  of  delicate  dignity,  and  winning 
kindness.  I  think  it  a  misfortune  for  the  present  gen- 
eration that  his  books  have  fallen  into  a  kind  of  neg- 
lect, and  I  believe  that  they  will  emerge  from  it  again 
to  the  advantage  of  literature. 

In  spite  of  Heine  and  Tennyson,  De  Quincey  had  a 
large  place  in  my  affections,  though  this  was  perhaps 
because  he  was  not  a  poet ;  for  more  than  those  two 
great  poets  there  was  then  not  much  room.  I  read  him 
the  first  winter  I  was  at  Columbus,  and  when  I  went 
down  from  the  village  the  next  winter,  to  take  up  my 
legislative  correspondence  again,  I  read  him  more  than 
ever.  But  that  was  destined  to  be  for  me  a  very  dis- 
heartening time.  I  had  just  passed  through  a  rheu- 
matic fever,  which  left  my  health  more  broken  than 
before,  and  one  morning  shortly  after  I  was  settled  in 
the  capital,  I  woke  to  find  the  room  going  round  me 
like  a  wheel.  It  was  the  beginning  of  a  vertigo  which 
lasted  for  six  months,  and  which  I  began  to  fight  with 
various  devices  and  must  yield  to  at  last.  I  tried  med- 
M 


178  MY    LITERAEY    PASSIONS. 

icine  and  exercise,  but  it  was  useless,  and  my  father 
came  to  take  my  letters  off  my  hands  while  I  gave  my- 
self some  ineffectual  respites.  I  made  a  little  journey 
to  my  old  home  in  southern  Ohio,  but  there  and  every- 
where, the  sure  and  firm-set  earth  waved  and  billowed 
under  my  feet,  and  I  came  back  to  Columbus  and  tried 
to  forget  in  my  work  the  fact  that  I  was  no  better.  I 
did  not  give  up  trying  to  read,  as  usual,  and  part  of 
my  endeavor  that  winter  was  with  Schiller,  and  Uh- 
land,  and  even  Goethe,  whose  Wahlverwandschaften 
hardly  yielded  up  its  mystery  to  me.  To  tell  the 
truth,  I  do  not  think  that  I  found  my  account  in  that 
novel.  It  must  needs  be  a  disappointment  after  Wil- 
helm  Meister,  which  I  had  read  in  English ;  but  I  dare 
say  my  disappointment  was  largely  my  own  fault ;  I 
had  certainly  no  right  to  expect  such  constant  proofs 
and  instances  of  wisdom  in  Goethe  as  the  unwisdom 
of  his  critics  had  led  me  to  hope  for.  I  remember  lit- 
tle or  nothing  of  the  story,  which  I  tried  to  find  very 
memorable,  as  I  held  my  sick  way  through  it.  Long- 
fellow's Miles  Standish  came  out  that  winter,  and  I 
suspect  that  1  got  vastly  more  real  pleasure  from  that 
one  poem  of  his  than  I  found  in  all  my  German  au- 
thors put  together,  the  adored  Heine  always  excepted ; 
though  certainly  I  felt  the  romantic  beauty  of  Uhland, 


DE    QUINCEY,    GOETHE,    LONGFELLOW.        179 

and  was  aware  of  something  of  Schiller's  generous 
grandeur. 

Of  the  American  writers  Longfellow  has  been  most 
a  passion  with  me,  as  the  English,  and  German,  and 
Spanish,  and  Russian  writers  have  been.  I  am  sure 
that  this  was  largely  by  mere  chance.  It  was  because 
I  happened,  in  such  a  frame  and  at  such  a  time,  to 
come  upon  his  books  that  I  loved  them  above  those  of 
other  men  as  great.  I  am  perfectly  sensible  that  Low- 
ell and  Emerson  outvalue  many  of  the  poets  and  proph- 
ets I  have  given  my  heart  to ;  I  have  read  them  with 
delight  and  with  a  deep  sense  of  their  greatness,  and 
yet  they  have  not  been  my  life  like  those  other,  those 
lesser,  men.  But  none  of  the  passions  are  reasoned, 
and  I  do  not  try  to  account  for  my  literary  preferences 
or  to  justify  them. 

I  dragged  along  through  several  months  of  that  win- 
ter, and  did  my  best  to  carry  out  that  notable  scheme 
of  not  minding  my  vertigo.  I  tried  doing  half-work, 
and  helping  my  father  with  the  correspondence,  but 
when  it  appeared  that  nothing  would  avail,  he  re- 
mained in  charge  of  it,  till  the  close  of  the  session, 
and  I  went  home  to  try  what  a  complete  and  prolonged 
rest  would  do  for  me.  I  was  not  fit  for  work  in  the 
printing-office,  but  that  was  a  simpler  matter  than  the 


180  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

literary  work  that  was  always  tempting  me.  I  could 
get  away  from  it  only  by  taking  my  gun  and  tramping 
day  after  day  through  the  deep,  primeval  woods.  The 
fatigue  was  wholesome,  and  I  was  so  bad  a  shot  that 
no  other  creature  suffered  loss  from  my  gain  except 
one  hapless  wild  pigeon.  The  thawing  snow  left  the 
fallen  beechnuts  of  the  autumn  before  uncovered 
among  the  dead  leaves,  and  the  forest  was  full  of  the 
beautiful  birds.  In  most  parts  of  the  middle  West 
they  are  no  longer  seen,  except  in  twos  or  threes,  but 
once  they  were  like  the  sands  of  the  sea  for  multitude. 
It  was  not  now  the  season  when  they  hid  half  the 
heavens  with  their  flight  day  after  day  ;  but  they  were 
in  myriads  all  through  the  woods,  where  their  irides- 
cent breasts  shone  like  a  sudden  untimely  growth  of 
flowers  when  you  came  upon  them  from  the  front. 
When  they  rose  in  fright,  it  was  like  the  upward  leap 
of  fire,  and  with  the  roar  of  flame.  I  use  images 
which,  after  all,  are  false  to  the  thing  I  wish  to  ex- 
press ;  but  they  must  serve.  I  tried  honestly  enough 
to  kill  the  pigeons,  but  I  had  no  luck,  or  too  much, 
till  I  happened  to  bring  down  one  of  a  pair  that  I 
found  apart  from  the  rest  in  a  lofty  tree-top.  The 
poor  creature  I  had  widowed  followed  me  to  the  verge 
of  the  woods,  as  I  started  home  with  my  prey,  and  I 


DE    QUINCEY,    GOETHE,    LONGFELLOW.         181 

do  not  care  to  know  more  personally  the  feelings  of  a 
murderer  than  I  did  then.  I  tried  to  shoot  the  bird, 
but  my  aim  was  so  bad  that  I  could  not  do  her  this 
mercy,  and  at  last  she  flew  away,  and  I  saw  her  no 
more. 

The  spring  was  now  opening,  and  I  was  able  to 
keep  more  and  more  with  Nature,  who  was  kinder  to 
me  than  I  was  to  her  other  children,  or  wished  to  be, 
and  I  got  the  better  of  my  malady,  which  gradually 
left  me  for  no  more  reason  apparently  than  it  came 
upon  me.  But  I  was  still  far  from  well,  and  I  was  in 
despair  of  my  future.  I  began  to  read  again —  I  sup- 
pose I  had  really  never  altogether  stopped.  I  bor- 
rowed from  my  friend  the  bookbinder  a  German  novel, 
which  had  for  me  a  message  of  lasting  cheer.  It  was 
the  Afraja  of  Theodore  Miigge,  a  story  of  life  in  Nor- 
way during  the  last  century,  and  I  remember  it  as  a 
very  lovely  story  indeed,  with  honest  studies  of  charac- 
ter among  the  Norwegians,  and  a  tender  pathos  in  the 
fate  of  the  little  Lap  heroine  Gula,  who  was  perhaps 
sufficiently  romanced.  The  hero  was  a  young  Dane, 
who  was  going  up  among  the  fiords  to  seek  his  fortune 
in  the  northern  fisheries ;  and  by  a  process  inevitable 
in  youth  I  became  identified  with  him,  so  that  I  ad- 
ventured, and  enjoyed,  and  suffered  in  his  person 


182  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

throughout.  There  was  a  supreme  moment  when  he 
was  sailing  through  the  fiords,  and  finding  himself  ap- 
parently locked  in  by  their  mountain  walls  without 
sign  or  hope  of  escape,  but  somehow  always  escaping 
by  some  unimagined  channel,  and  keeping  on.  The 
lesson  for  him  was  one  of  trust  and  courage ;  and  I, 
who  seemed  to  be  then  shut  in  upon  a  mountain-walled 
fiord  without  inlet  or  outlet,  took  the  lesson  home  and 
promised  myself  not  to  lose  heart  again.  It  seems  a 
little  odd  that  this  passage  of  a  book,  by  no  means  of 
the  greatest,  should  have  had  such  an  effect  with  me 
at  a  time  when  I  was  no  longer  so  young  as  to  be  un- 
duly impressed  by  what  I  read ;  but  it  is  true  that  I 
have  never  since  found  myself  in  circumstances  where 
there  seemed  to  be  no  getting  forward  or  going  back, 
without  a  vision  of  that  fiord  scenery,  and  then  a  rise 
of  faith,  that  if  I  kept  on  I  should,  somehow,  come 
out  of  my  prisoning  environment. 


XXVI. 

GEORGE    ELIOT,     HAWTHORNE,    GOETHE,    HEINE. 

I  GOT  back  health  enough  to  be  of  use  in  the  print- 
ing-office that  autumn,  and  I  was  quietly  at  work  there 
with  no  visible  break  in  my  surroundings  when  sud- 
denly the  whole  world  opened  to  me  through  what  had 
seemed  an  impenetrable  wall.  The  Republican  news- 
paper at  the  capital  had  been  bought  by  a  new  man- 
agement, and  the  editorial  force  reorganized  upon  a 
footing  of  what  we  then  thought  metropolitan  enter- 
prise ;  and  to  my  great  joy  and  astonishment  I  was 
asked  to  come  and  take  a  place  in  it.  The  place  of- 
fered me  was  not  one  of  lordly  distinction ;  in  fact,  it 
was  partly  of  the  character  of  that  I  had  already  re- 
jected in  Cincinnati,  but  I  hoped  that  in  the  smaller 
city  its  duties  would  not  be  so  odious ;  and  by  the 
time  I  came  to  fill  it,  a  change  had  taken  place  in  the 
arrangements  so  that  I  was  given  charge  of  the  news 


184  MY   LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

department.  This  included  the  literary  notices  and 
the  book  reviews,  and  I  am  afraid  that  I  at  once  gave 
my  prime  attention  to  these. 

It  was  an  evening  paper,  and  I  had  nearly  as  much 
time  for  reading  and  study  as  I  had  at  home.  But 
now  society  began  to  claim  a  share  of  this  leisure, 
which  I  by  no  means  begrudged  it.  Society  was  very 
charming  in  Columbus  then,  with  a  pretty  constant 
round  of  dances  and  suppers,  and  an  easy  cordiality, 
which  I  dare  say  young  people  still  find  in  it  every- 
where. I  met  a  great  many  cultivated  people,  chiefly 
young  ladies,  and  there  were  several  houses  where  we 
young  fellows  went  and  came  almost  as  freely  as  if 
they  were  our  own.  There  we  had  music  and  cards, 
and  talk  about  books,  and  life  appeared  to  me  richly 
worth  living ;  if  any  one  had  said  this  was  not  the 
best  planet  in  the  universe  I  should  have  called  him  a 
pessimist,  or  at  least  thought  him  so,  for  we  had  not 
the  word  in  those  days.  A  world  in  which  all  those 
pretty  and  gracious  women  dwelt,  among  the  figures 
of  the  waltz  and  the  lancers,  with  chat  between  about 
the  last  installment  of  The  Newcomes,  was  good 
enough  world  for  me ;  I  was  only  afraid  it  was  too 
good.  There  were,  of  course,  some  girls  who  did  not 
read,  but  few  openly  professed  indifference  to  litera- 


GEORGE  ELIOT,   HAWTHORNE,   GOETHE,   HEINE.   185 

ture,  and  there  was  much  lending  of  books  back  and 
forth,  and  much  debate  of  them.  That  was  the  day 
when  Adam  Bede  was  a  new  book,  and  in  this  I  had 
my  first  knowledge  of  that  great  intellect  for  which  I 
had  no  passion,  indeed,  but  always  the  deepest  re- 
spect, the  highest  honor ;  and  which  has  from  time  to 
time  profoundly  influenced  me  by  its  ethics. 

I  state  these  things  simply  and  somewhat  baldly ;  I 
might  easily  refine  upon  them,  and  study  that  subtle 
effect  for  good  and  for  evil  which  young  people  are 
always  receiving  from  the  fiction  they  read ;  but  this 
is  not  the  time  or  place  for  the  inquiry,  and  I  only 
wish  to  own  that  so  far  as  I  understand  it,  the  chief 
part  of  my  ethical  experience  has  been  from  novels. 
The  life  and  character  I  have  found  portrayed  there 
have  appealed  always  to  the  consciousness  of  right  and 
wrong  implanted  in  me ;  and  from  no  one  has  this  ap- 
peal been  stronger  than  from  George  Eliot.  Her  in- 
fluence continued  through  many  years,  and  I  can 
question  it  now  only  in  the  undue  burden  she  seems 
to  throw  upon  the  individual,  and  her  failure  to 
account  largely  enough  for  motive  from  the  social  en- 
vironment. There  her  work  seems  to  me  unphilosoph- 
ical. 

It  shares  whatever  error  there  is  in  its  perspective 


186  MY   LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

with  that  of  Hawthorne,  whose  Marble  Faun  was  a 
new  book  at  the  same  time  that  Adam  Bede  was  new, 
and  whose  books  now  came  into  my  life  and  gave  it 
their  tinge.  He  was  always  dealing  with  the  problem 
of  evil,  too,  and  I  found  a  more  potent  charm  in  his 
more  artistic  handling  of  it  than  I  found  in  George 
Eliot.  Of  course,  I  then  preferred  the  region  of  pure 
romance  where  he  liked  to  place  his  action ;  but  I  did 
not  find  his  instances  the  less  veritable  because  they 
shone  out  in 

"  The  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land." 
I  read  the  Marble  Faun  first,  and  then  the  Scarlet 
Letter,  and  then  the  House  of  Seven  Gables,  and  then 
the  Blithedale  Romance  ;  but  I  always  liked  best  the 
last,  which  is  more  nearly  a  novel,  and  more  realistic 
than  the  others.  They  all  moved  me  with  a  sort  of 
effect  such  as  I  had  not  felt  before.  They  were  so  far 
from  time  and  place  that,  although  most  of  them  re- 
lated to  our  country  and  epoch,  I  could  not  imagine 
anything  approximate  from  them;  and  Hawthorne 
himself  seemed  a  remote  and  impalpable  agency,  rath- 
er than  a  person  whom  one  might  actually  meet,  as 
not  long  afterward  happened  with  me.  I  did  not  hold 
the  sort  of  fancied  converse  with  him  that  I  held  with 
other  authors,  and  I  cannot  pretend  that  I  had  the  af- 


GEORGE  ELIOT,  HAWTHORNE,  GOETHE,  HEINE.   187 

fection  for  him  that  attracted  me  to  them.  But  he 
held  me  by  his  potent  spell,  and  for  a  time  he  domi- 
nated me  as  completely  as  any  author  I  have  read. 
More  truly  than  any  other  American  author  he  has 
been  a  passion  with  me,  and  lately  I  heard  with  a  kind 
of  pang  a  young  man  saying  that  he  did  not  believe  I 
should  find  the  Scarlet  Letter  bear  reading  now.  I 
did  not  assent  to  the  possibility,  but  the  notion  gave 
me  a  shiver  of  dismay.  I  thought  how  much  that 
book  had  been  to  me,  how  much  all  of  Hawthorne's 
books  had  been,  and  to  have  parted  with  my  faith  in 
their  perfection  would  have  been  something  I  would 
not  willingly  have  risked  doing. 

Of  course  there  is  always  something  fatally  weak  in 
the  scheme  of  the  pure  romance,  which,  after  the  color 
of  the  contemporary  mood  dies  out  of  it,  leaves  it  in 
danger  of  tumbling  into  the  dust  of  allegory ;  and  per- 
haps this  inherent  weakness  was  what  that  bold  critic 
felt  in  the  Scarlet  Letter.  But  none  of  Hawthorne's 
fables  are  without  a  profound  and  distant  reach  into 
the  recesses  of  nature  and  of  being.  He  came  back 
from  his  researches  with  no  solution  of  the  question, 
with  no  message,  indeed,  but  the  awful  warning,  "Be 
true,  be  true,"  which  is  the  burden  of  the  Scarlet  Let- 
ter ;  yet  in  all  his  books  there  is  the  hue  of  thoughts 


188  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

that  we  think  only  in  the  presence  of  the  mysteries  of 
life  and  death.  It  is  not  his  fault  that  this  is  not  in- 
telligence, that  it  knots  the  brow  in  sorer  doubt  rather 
than  shapes  the  lips  to  utterance  of  the  things  that 
can  never  be  said.  Some  of  his  shorter  stories  I  have 
found  thin  and  cold  to  my  later  reading,  and  I  have 
never  cared  much  for  the  House  of  Seven  Gables,  but 
the  other  day  I  was  reading  the  Blithedale  Romance 
again,  and  I  found  it  as  potent,  as  significant,  as  sadly 
and  strangely  true  as  when  it  first  enthralled  my  soul. 
In  those  days  when  I  tried  to  kindle  my  heart  at 
the  cold  altar  of  Goethe,  I  did  read  a  great  deal  of  his 
prose  and  somewhat  of  his  poetry,  but  it  was  to  be 
ten  years  yet  before  I  should  go  faithfully  through 
with  his  Faust  and  come  to  know  its  power.  For  the 
present,  I  read  Wilhelm  Meister  and  the  Wahlver- 
wandschaften,  and  worshiped  him  much  at  second- 
hand through  Heine.  In  the  meantime  I  invested 
such  Germans  as  I  met  with  the  halo  of  their  national 
poetry,  and  there  was  one  lady  of  whom  I  heard  with 
awe  that  she  had  once  known  my  Heine.  When  I 
came  to  meet  her,  over  a  glass  of  the  mild  egg-nog 
which  she  served  at  her  house  on  Sunday  nights,  and 
she  told  me  about  Heine,  and  how  he  looked,  and 
some  few  things  he  said,  I  suffered  an  indescribable 


GEORGE  ELIOT,  HAWTHORNE,  GOETHE,  HEINE.  189 

disappointment;  and  if  I  could  have  been  frank  with 
myself  I  should  have  owned  to  a  fear  that  it  might 
have  been  something  like  that,  if  I  had  myself  met  the 
poet  in  the  flesh,  and  tried  to  hold  the  intimate  con- 
verse with  him  that  I  held  in  the  spirit.  But  I  shut 
my  heart  to  all  such  misgivings  and  went  on  reading 
him  much  more  than  I  read  any  other  German  author. 
I  went  on  writing  him  too,  just  as  I  went  on  reading 
and  writing  Tennyson.  Heine  was  always  a  personal 
interest  with  me,  and  every  word  of  his  made  me  long 
to  have  had  him  say  it  to  me,  and  tell  me  why  he  said 
it.  In  a  poet  of  alien  race  and  language  and  religion 
I  found  a  greater  sympathy  than  I  have  experienced 
with  any  other.  Perhaps  the  Jews  are  still  the  chosen 
people,  but  now  they  bear  the  message  of  humanity, 
while  once  they  bore  the  message  of  divinity.  I  knew 
the  ugliness  of  Heine's  nature :  his  revengef illness,  and 
malice,  and  cruelty,  and  treachery,  and  uncleanness; 
and  yet  he  was  supremely  charming  among  the  poets 
I  have  read.  The  tenderness  I  still  feel  for  him  is 
not  a  reasoned  love,  I  must  own;  but,  as  I  am  always 
asking,  when  was  love  ever  reasoned  ? 

I  had  a  room-mate  that  winter  in  Columbus  who 
was  already  a  contributor  to  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
and  who  read  Browning  as  devotedly  as  I  read  Heine. 


190  MY   LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

I  will  not  say  that  he  wrote  him  as  constantly,  but  if 
that  had  been  so,  I  should  not  have  cared.  What  I 
could  not  endure  without  pangs  of  secret  jealousy  was 
that  he  should  like  Heine,  too,  and  should  read  him, 
though  it  was  but  at  arm's -length  in  an  English  ver- 
sion. He  had  found  the  origins  of  those  tricks  and 
turns  of  Heine's  in  Tristram  Shandy  and  the  Senti- 
mental Journey;  and  this  galled  me,  as  if  he  had 
shown  that  some  mistress  of  my  soul  had  studied  her 
graces  from  another  girl,  and  that  it  was  not  all  her 
own  hair  that  she  wore.  I  hid  my  rancor  as  well  as  I 
could,  and  took  what  revenge  lay  in  my  power  by  in- 
sinuating that  he  might  have  a  very  different  view  if 
he  read  Heine  in  the  original.  I  also  made  haste  to 
try  my  own  fate  with  the  Atlantic,  and  I  sent  off  to 
Mr.  Lowell  that  poem  which  he  kept  so  long  in  order 
to  make  sure  that  Heine  had  not  written  it,  as  well  as 
authorized  it. 


XXVII. 

CHARLES  READE. 

THIS  was  the  winter  when  my  friend  Piatt  and  I 
made  our  first  literary  venture  together  in  those  Poems 
of  Two  Friends,  which  hardly  passed  the  circle  of  our 
amity ;  and  it  was  altogether  a  time  of  high  literary 
exaltation  with  me.  I  walked  the  streets  of  the 
friendly  little  city  by  day  and  by  night  with  my  head 
so  full  of  rhymes  and  poetic  phrases  that  it  seemed  as 
if  their  buzzing  might  have  been  heard  several  yards 
away ;  and  I  do  not  yet  see  quite  how  I  contrived  to 
keep  their  music  out  of  my  newspaper  paragraphs. 
Out  of  the  newspaper  I  could  not  keep  it,  and  from 
time  to  time  I  broke  into  verse  in  its  columns,  to  the 
great  amusement  of  the  leading  editor,  who  knew  me 
for  a  young  man  with  a  very  sharp  tooth  for  such 
self-betrayals  in  others.  He  wanted  to  print  a  bur- 
lesque review  he  wrote  of  the  Poems  of  Two  Friends 


192  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

in  our  paper,  but  I  would  not  suffer  it.  I  must  allow 
that  it  was  very  funny,  and  that  he  was  always  a  gen- 
erous friend,  whose  wounds  would  have  been  as  faith- 
ful as  any  that  could  have  been  dealt  me  then.  He 
did  not  indeed  care  much  for  any  poetry  but  that  of 
Shakespeare  and  the  Ingoldsby  Legends;  and  when 
one  morning  a  State  Senator  came  into  the  office  with 
a  volume  of  Tennyson,  and  began  to  read, 

"  The  poet  in  a  golden  clime  was  born, 

With  golden  stars  above ; 

Dowered  with  the  hate  of  hate,  the  scorn  of  scorn, 
The  love  of  love," 

he  hitched  his  chair  about,  and  started  in  on  his  leader 
for  the  day. 

He  might  have  been  more  patient  if  he  had  known 
that  this  State  Senator  was  to  be  President  Garfield. 
But  who  could  know  anything  of  the  tragical  history 
that  was  so  soon  to  follow  that  winter  of  1859-60? 
Not  I ;  at  least  I  listened  rapt  by  the  poet  and  the 
reader,  and  it  seemed  to  me  as  if  the  making  and  the 
reading  of  poetry  were  to  go  on  forever,  and  that  was 
to  be  all  there  was  of  it.  To  be  sure  I  had  my  hard 
little  journalistic  misgivings  that  it  was  not  quite  the 
thing  for  a  State  Senator  to  come  round  reading  Ten- 
nyson at  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  I  dare  say  I 
felt  myself  superior  in  my  point  of  view,  though  1 


CHARLES    RBADE.  193 

could  not  resist  the  charm  of  the  verse.  I  myself  did 
not  bring  Tennyson  to  the  office  at  that  time.  I 
brought  Thackeray,  and  I  remember  that  one  day 
when  I  had  read  half  an  hour  or  so  in  the  Book  of 
Snobs,  the  leading  editor  said  frankly,  Well,  now,  he 
guessed  we  had  had  enough  of  that.  He  apologized 
afterward  as  if  he  were  to  blame,  and  not  I,  but  I  dare 
say  I  was  a  nuisance  with  my  different  literary  pas- 
sions, and  must  have  made  many  of  my  acquaintances 
very  tired  of  my  favorite  authors.  I  had  some  con- 
sciousness of  the  fact,  but  I  could  not  help  it. 

I  ought  not  to  omit  from  the  list  of  these  favorites 
an  author  who  was  then  beginning  to  have  his  greatest 
vogue,  and  who  somehow  just  missed  of  being  a  very 
great  one.  We  were  all  reading  his  jaunty,  nervy, 
knowing  books,  and  some  of  us  were  questioning 
whether  we  ought  not  to  set  him  above  Thackeray  and 
Dickens  and  George  Eliot,  tutti  quanti,  so  great  was 
the  effect  that  Charles  Reade  had  with  our  generation. 
He  was  a  man  who  stood  at  the  parting  of  the  ways 
between  realism  and  romanticism,  and  if  he  had  been 
somewhat  more  of  a  man  he  might  have  been  the  mas- 
ter of  a  great  school  of  English  realism ;  but,  as  it 
was,  he  remained  content  to  use  the  materials  of  real- 
ism and  produce  the  effect  of  romanticism.  He  saw 
N 


194  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

that  life  itself  infinitely  outvalued  anything  that  could 
be  feigned  about  it,  but  its  richness  seemed  to  corrupt 
him,  and  he  had  not  the  clear>  ethical  conscience 
which  forced  George  Eliot  to  be  realistic  when  proba- 
bly her  artistic  prepossessions  were  romantic. 

As  yet,  however,  there  was  no  reasoning  of  the 
matter,  and  Charles  Reade  was  writing  books  of  tre- 
mendous adventure  and  exaggerated  character,  which 
he  prided  himself  on  deriving  from  the  facts  of  the 
world  around  him.  He  was  intoxicated  with  the  dis- 
covery he  had  made  that  the  truth  was  beyond  inven- 
tion, but  he  did  not  know  what  to  do  with  the  truth 
in  art  after  he  had  found  it  in  life,  and  to  this  day  the 
English  mostly  do  not.  We  young  people  were  easily 
taken  with  his  glittering  error,  and  we  read  him  with 
much  the  same  fury  that  he  wrote.  Never  Too  Late  to 
Mend  ;  Love  Me  Little,  Love  Me  Long ;  Christie  John- 
stone  ;  Peg  Woffington ;  and  then,  later,  Hard  Cash, 
The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth,  Foul  Play,  Put  Yourself 
in  His  Place  —  how  much  they  all  meant  once,  or 
seemed  to  mean ! 

The  first  of  them,  and  the  other  poems  and  fictions 
I  was  reading,  meant  more  to  me  than  the  rumors  of 
war  that  were  then  filling  the  air,  and  that  so  soon  be- 
came its  awful  actualities.  To  us  who  have  our  lives 


CHARLES    READE.  195 

so  largely  in  books  the  material  world  is  always  the 
fable,  and  the  ideal  the  fact.  I  walked  with  my  feet 
on  the  ground,  but  my  head  was  in  the  clouds,  as  light 
as  any  of  them.  I  neither  praise  nor  blame  this  fact ; 
but  I  feel  bound  to  own  it,  for  that  time,  and  for  every 
time  in  my  life,  since  the  witchery  of  literature  began 
with  me. 

Those  two  happy  winters  in  Columbus,  when  I  was 
finding  opportunity  and  recognition,  were  the  heydey 
of  life  for  me.  There  has  been  no  time  like  them 
since,  though  there  have  been  smiling  and  prosperous 
times  a  plenty ;  for  then  I  was  in  the  blossom  of  my 
youth,  and  what  I  had  not  I  could  hope  for  without 
unreason,  for  I  had  so  much  of  that  which  I  had  most 
desired.  Those  times  passed,  and  there  came  other 
times,  long  years  of  abeyance,  and  waiting  and  defeat, 
which  I  thought  would  never  end,  but  they  passed, 
too. 

I  got  my  appointment  of  Consul  to  Venice,  and  I 
went  home  to  wait  for  my  passport  and  to  spend  the 
last  days,  so  full  of  civic  trouble,  before  I  should  set 
out  for  my  post.  If  I  hoped  to  serve  my  country 
there  and  sweep  the  Confederate  cruisers  from  the 
Adriatic,  I  am  afraid  my  prime  intent  was  to  add  to 
her  literature  and  to  my  own  credit.  I  intended, 


196  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

while  keeping  a  sleepless  eye  out  for  privateers,  to 
write  poems  concerning  American  life  which  should 
eclipse  anything  yet  done  in  that  kind,  and  in  the 
meantime  I  read  voraciously  and  perpetually,  to  make 
the  days  go  swiftly  which  I  should  have  been  so  glad 
to  have  linger.  In  this  month  I  devoured  all  the  Wa- 
verley  novels,  but  I  must  have  been  devouring  a  great 
many  others,  for  Charles  Reade's  Christie  Johnstone 
is  associated  with  the  last  moment  of  the  last  days. 

A  few  months  ago  I  was  at  the  old  home,  and  I 
read  that  book  again,  after  not  looking  at  it  for  more 
than  thirty  years ;  and  I  read  it  with  amazement  at  its 
prevailing  artistic  vulgarity,  its  prevailing  aesthetic  er- 
ror shot  here  and  there  with  gleams  of  light,  and  of 
the  truth  that  Reade  himself  was  always  dimly  groping 
for.  The  book  is  written  throughout  on  the  verge  of 
realism,  with  divinations  and  conjectures  across  its 
border,  and  with  lapses  into  the  fool's  paradise  of  ro- 
manticism, and  an  apparent  content  with  its  inanity 
and  impossibility.  But  then  it  was  brilliantly  new 
and  surprising;  it  seemed  to  be  the  last  word  that 
could  be  said  for  the  truth  in  fiction ;  and  it  had  a 
spell  that  held  us  like  an  anaesthetic  above  the  ache 
of  parting,  and  the  anxiety  for  the  years  that  must 
pass,  with  all  their  redoubled  chances,  before  our  home 


CHARLES    READE.  197 

circle  could  be  made  whole  again.  I  read  on,  and  the 
rest  listened,  till  the  wheels  of  the  old  stage  made 
themselves  heard  in  their  approach  through  the  abso- 
lute silence  of  the  village  street.  Then  we  shut  the 
book  and  all  went  down  to  the  gate  together,  and 
parted  under  the  pale  sky  of  the  October  night.  There 
was  one  of  the  home  group  whom  I  was  not  to  see 
again:  the  young  brother  who  died  in  the  blossom  of 
his  years  before  I  returned  from  my  far  and  strange 
sojourn.  He  was  too  young  then  to  share  our  read- 
ing of  the  novel,  but  when  I  ran  up  to  his  room  to  bid 
him  good-by  I  found  him  awake,  and,  with  aching 
hearts,  we  bade  each  other  good-by  forever  ! 


XXVIII. 

DANTE. 

I  RAN  through  an  Italian  grammar  on  my  way  across 
the  Atlantic,  and  from  my  knowledge  of  Latin,  Span- 
ish and  French,  I  soon  had  a  reading  acquaintance 
with  the  language.  I  had  really  wanted  to  go  to  Ger- 
many, that  I  might  carry  forward  my  studies  in  Ger- 
man literature,  and  I  first  applied  for  the  consulate  at 
Munich.  The  powers  at  Washington  thought  it  quite 
the  same  thing  to  offer  me  Rome ;  but  I  found  that 
the  income  of  the  Roman  consulate  would  not  give  me 
a  living,  and  I  was  forced  to  decline  it.  Then  the 
President's  private  secretaries,  Mr.  John  Mcolay  and 
Mr.  John  Hay,  who  did  not  know  me  except  as  a 
young  Westerner  who  had  written  poems  in  the  At- 
lantic Monthly,  asked  me  how  I  would  like  Venice, 
and  promised  that  they  would  have  the  salary  put  up 
to  a  thousand  a  year,  under  the  new  law  to  embarrass 


DANTE.  199 

privateers.  It  was  really  put  up  to  fifteen  hundred, 
and  with  this  income  assured  to  me  I  went  out  to  the 
city  whose  influence  changed  the  whole  course  of  my 
literary  life. 

No  privateers  ever  came,  though  I  once  had  notice 
from  Turin  that  the  Florida  had  been  sighted  off  An- 
cona;  and  I  had  nearly  four  years  of  nearly  uninter- 
rupted leisure  at  Venice,  which  I  meant  to  employ  in 
reading  all  Italian  literature,  and  writing  a  history  of 
the  republic.  The  history,  of  course,  I  expected 
would  be  a  long  affair,  and  I  did  not  quite  suppose 
that  I  could  dispatch  the  literature  in  any  short  time ; 
besides,  I  had  several  considerable  poems  on  hand  that 
occupied  me  a  good  deal,  and  I  worked  at  these  as 
well  as  advanced  myself  in  Italian,  preparatory  to  the 
efforts  before  me. 

I  had  already  a  fairish  general  notion  of  Italian  let- 
ters from  Leigh  Hunt,  and  from  other  agreeable  Eng- 
lish Italianates ;  and  I  knew  that  I  wanted  to  read  not 
only  the  four  great  poets,  Dante,  Petrarch,  Ariosto 
and  Tasso,  but  that  whole  group  of  burlesque  poets, 
Pulci,  Berni,  and  the  rest,  who,  from  what  I  knew  of 
them,  I  thought  would  be  even  more  to  my  mind.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  and  in  the  process  of  time,  I  did  read 
somewhat  of  all  these,  but  rather  in  the  minor  than 


200  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

the  major  way ;  and  I  soon  went  off  from  them  to  the 
study  of  the  modern  poets,  novelists  and  playwrights 
who  interested  me  so  much  more.  After  my  wonted 
fashion  I  read  half  a  dozen  of  these  authors  together, 
so  that  it  would  be  hard  to  say  which  I  began  with, 
but  I  had  really  a  devotion  to  Dante,  though  not  at 
that  time,  or  ever  for  the  whole  of  Dante.  During 
my  first  year  in  Venice  I  met  an  ingenious  priest,  who 
had  been  a  tutor  in  a  patrician  family,  and  who  was 
willing  to  lead  my  faltering  steps  through  the  Inferno. 
This  part  of  the  Divine  Comedy  I  read  with  a  begin- 
ner's carefulness,  and  with  a  rapture  in  its  beauties, 
which  I  will  whisper  the  reader  do  not  appear  in  every 
line. 

Again  I  say  it  is  a  great  pity  that  criticism  is  not 
honest  about  the  masterpieces  of  literature,  and  does 
not  confess  that  they  are  not  every  moment  masterly, 
that  they  are  often  dull  and  tough  and  dry,  as  is  cer- 
tainly the  case  with  Dante's.  Some  day,  perhaps,  we 
shall  have  this  way  of  treating  literature,  and  then  the 
lover  of  it  will  not  feel  obliged  to  browbeat  himself 
into  the  belief  that  if  he  is  not  always  enjoying  him- 
self it  is  his  own  fault.  At  any  rate  I  will  permit 
myself  the  luxury  of  frankly  saying  that  while  I  had 
a  deep  sense  of  the  majesty  and  grandeur  of  Dante's 


DANTE.  201 

design,  many  points  of  its  execution  bored  me,  and 
that  I  found  the  intermixture  of  small  local  fact  and 
neighborhood  history  in  the  fabric  of  his  lofty  creation 
no  part  of  its  noblest  effect.  What  is  marvelous  in 
it  is  its  expression  of  Dante's  personality,  and  I  can 
never  think  that  his  personalities  enhance  its  greatness 
as  a  work  of  art.  I  enjoyed  them,  however,  and  I 
enjoyed  them  the  more,  as  the  innumerable  perspec- 
tives of  Italian  history  began  to  open  all  about  me. 
Then,  indeed,  I  understood  the  origins  if  I  did  not 
understand  the  aims  of  Dante,  which  there  is  still 
much  dispute  about  among  those  who  profess  to  know 
them  clearly.  What  I  finally  perceived  was  that  his 
poem  came  through  him  from  the  heart  of  Italian  life, 
such  as  it  was  in  his  time,  and  that  whatever  it 
teaches,  his  poem  expresses  that  life,  in  all  its  splen- 
dor and  squalor,  its  beauty  and  deformity,  its  love  and 
its  hate. 

Criticism  may  torment  this  sense  or  that  sense  out 
of  it,  but  at  the  end  of  the  ends  the  Divine  Comedy 
will  stand  for  the  patriotism  of  mediaeval  Italy,  as  far 
as  its  ethics  is  concerned,  and  for  a  profound  and  lofty 
ideal  of  beauty,  as  far  as  its  aesthetics  is  concerned. 
This  is  vague  enough  and  slight  enough,  I  must  con- 
fess, but  I  must  confess  also  that  I  had  not  even  a 


202  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

conception  of  so  much  when  I  first  read  the  Inferno. 
I  went  at  it  very  simply,  and  my  enjoyment  of  it  was 
that  sort  which  finds  its  account  in  the  fine  passages, 
the  brilliant  episodes,  the  striking  pictures.  This  was 
the  effect  with  me  of  all  the  criticism  which  I  had 
hitherto  read,  and  I  am  not  sure  yet  that  the  criticism 
which  tries  to  be  of  a  larger  scope,  and  to  see  things 
"  whole,"  is  of  any  definite  effect.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  we  see  nothing  whole,  neither  life  nor  art.  We 
are  so  made,  in  soul  and  in  sense,  that  we  can  deal 
only  with  parts,  with  points,  with  degrees ;  and  the 
endeavor  to  compass  any  entirety  must  involve  a  dis- 
comfort and  a  danger  very  threatening  to  our  intel- 
lectual integrity. 

Or  if  this  postulate  is  as  untenable  as  all  the  others, 
still  I  am  very  glad  that  I  did  not  then  lose  any  fact 
of  the  majesty,  and  beauty,  and  pathos  of  the  great 
certain  measures  for  the  sake  of  that  fourth  dimension 
of  the  poem  which  is  not  yet  made  palpable  or  visible. 
I  took  my  sad  heart's  fill  of  the  sad  story  of  Paolo  and 
Francesca,  which  I  already  knew  in  Leigh  Hunt's 
adorable  dilution,  and  most  of  the  lines  read  them- 
selves into  my  memory,  where  they  linger  yet.  I 
supped  on  the  horrors  of  Ugolino's  fate  with  the 
strong  gust  of  youth,  which  finds  every  exercise  of 


DANTE.  203 

sympathy  a  pleasure.  My  good  priest  sat  beside  me 
in  these  rich  moments,  knotting  in  his  lap  the  calico 
handkerchief  of  the  snuff-taker,  and  entering  with 
tremulous  eagerness  into  my  joy  in  things  that  he  had 
often  before  enjoyed.  No  doubt  he  had  an  inexhaust- 
ible pleasure  in  them  apart  from  mine,  for  I  have 
found  my  pleasure  in  them  perennial,  and  have  not 
failed  to  taste  it  as  often  as  I  have  read  or  repeated 
any  of  the  great  passages  of  the  poem  to  myself.  This 
pleasure  came  often  from  some  vital  phrase,  or  merely 
the  inspired  music  of  a  phrase  quite  apart  from  its 
meaning.  I  did  not  get  then,  and  I  have  not  got 
since,  a  distinct  conception  of  the  journey  through 
Hell,  and  as  often  as  I  have  tried  to  understand  the 
topography  of  the  poem  I  have  fatigued  myself  to  no 
purpose,  but"  I  do  not  think  the  essential  meaning  was 
lost  upon  me. 

I  dare  say  my  priest  had  his  notion  of  the  general 
shape  and  purport,  the  gross  material  body  of  the 
thing,  but  he  did  not  trouble  me  with  it,  while  we  sat 
tranced  together  in  the  presence  of  its  soul.  He 
seemed,  at  times,  so  lost  in  the  beatific  vision,  that  he 
forgot  my  stumblings  in  the  philological  darkness,  till 
I  appealed  to  him  for  help.  Then  he  would  read 
aloud  with  that  magnificent  rhythm  the  Italians  have 


204:  MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

in  reading  their  verse,  and  the  obscured  meaning 
would  seem  to  shine  out  of  the  mere  music  of  the 
poem,  like  the  color  the  blind  feel  in  sound. 

I  do  not  know  what  has  become  of  him,  but  if  he 
is  like  the  rest  of  the  strange  group  of  my  guides, 
philosophers,  and  friends  in  literature — the  printer, 
the  organ-builder,  the  machinist,  the  drug-clerk  and 
the  bookbinder — I  am  afraid  he  is  dead.  In  fact,  I 
who  was  then  I,  might  be  said  to  be  dead  too,  so  little 
is  my  past  self  like  my  present  self  in  anything  but 
the  "  increasing  purpose  "  which  has  kept  me  one  in 
my  love  of  literature.  He  was  a  gentle  and  kindly 
man,  with  a  life  and  a  longing,  quite  apart  from  his 
vocation,  which  were  never  lived  or  fulfilled.  I  did 
not  see  him  after  he  ceased  to  read  Dante  with  me, 
and  in  fact  I  was  instructed  by  the  suspicions  of  my 
Italian  friends  to  be  careful  how  I  consorted  with  a 
priest,  who  might  very  well  be  an  Austrian  spy.  I 
parted  with  him  for  no  such  picturesque  reason,  for  I 
never  believed  him  other  than  the  truest  and  faithful- 
est  of  friends,  but  because  I  was  then  giving  myself 
more  entirely  to  work  in  which  he  could  not  help  me. 

Naturally  enough  this  was  a  long  poem  in  the  terza 
rima  of  the  Divina  Commedia,  and  dealing  with  a 
story  of  our  civil  war  in  a  fashion  so  remote  that  no 


DANTE.  205 

editor  would  print  it.  This  was  the  first  fruits  and 
the  last  of  my  reading  of  Dante,  in  verse,  and  it  was 
not  so  like  Dante  as  I  would  have  liked  to  make  it; 
but  Dante  is  not  easy  to  imitate ;  he  is  too  unconscious, 
and  too  single,  too  bent  upon  saying  the  thing  that  is 
in  him,  with  whatever  beauty  inheres  in  it,  to  put  on 
the  graces  that  others  may  catch. 


XXIX. 

GOLDONI,  MANZONI,  D'AZEGLIO. 

HOWEVER,  this  poem  only  shared  the  fate  of  nearly 
all  the  others  that  I  wrote  at  this  time ;  they  came 
back  to  me  with  unfailing  regularity  from  all  the  mag- 
azine editors  of  the  English-speaking  world ;  I  had  no 
success  with  any  of  them  till  I  sent  Mr.  Lowell  a  paper 
on  recent  Italian  comedy  for  the  North  American  Re- 
view, which  he  and  Professor  Norton  had  then  begun 
to  edit.  I  was  in  the  meantime  printing  the  material 
of  Venetian  Life  and  the  Italian  Journeys  in  a  Boston 
newspaper  after  its  rejection  by  the  magazines ;  and 
my  literary  life,  almost  without  my  willing  it,  had 
taken  the  course  of  critical  observance  of  books  and 
men  in  their  actuality. 

That  is  to  say,  I  was  studying  manners,  in  the  elder 
sense  of  the  word,  wherever  I  could  get  at  them  in 
the  frank  life  of  the  people  about  me,  and  in  such 


GOLDONI,   MANZOXI,  D'AZEGLIO.  207 

literature  of  Italy  as  was  then  modern.  In  this  pur- 
suit I  made  a  discovery  that  greatly  interested  me, 
and  that  specialized  my  inquiries.  I  found  that  the 
Italians  had  no  novels  which  treated  of  their  contem- 
porary life ;  that  they  had  no  modern  fiction  but  the 
historical  romance.  I  found  that  if  I  wished  to  know 
their  life  from  their  literature  I  must  go  to  their  dra- 
ma, which  was  even  then  endeavoring  to  give  their 
stage  a  faithful  picture  of  their  civilization.  There  was 
even  then,  in  the  new  circumstance  of  a  people  just 
liberated  from  every  variety  of  intellectual  repression 
and  political  oppression,  a  group  of  dramatic  authors, 
whose  plays  were  not  only  delightful  to  see  but  de- 
lightful to  read,  working  in  the  good  tradition  of  one 
of  the  greatest  realists  who  has  ever  lived,  and  pro- 
ducing a  drama  of  vital  strength  and  charm.  One  of 
them,  whom  I  by  no  means  thought  the  best,  has  given 
us  a  play,  known  to  all  the  world,  which  I  am  almost 
ready  to  think  with  Zola  is  the  greatest  play  of  mod- 
ern times ;  or  if  it  is  not  so,  I  should  be  puzzled  to 
name  the  modern  drama  that  surpasses  La  Morte  Civ- 
ile of  Paolo  Giacometti.  I  learned  to  know  all  the 
dramatists  pretty  well,  in  the  whole  range  of  their 
work,  on  the  stage  and  in  the  closet,  and  I  learned  to 
know  still  better,  and  to  love  supremely, the  fine,  ami- 


208  MY     LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

able  genius  whom,  as  one  of  them  said,  they  did  not 
so  much  imitate  as  learn  from  to  imitate  nature. 

This  was  Carlo  Goldoni,  the  first  of  the  realists,  but 
antedating  conscious  realism  so  long  as  to  have  been 
born  at  Venice  early  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  to 
have  come  to  his  hand-to-hand  fight  with  the  roman- 
ticism of  his  day  almost  before  that  century  had 
reached  its  noon.  In  the  early  sixties  of  our  own  cen- 
tury I  was  no  more  conscious  of  his  realism  than  he 
was  himself  a  hundred  years  before ;  but  I  had  eyes 
in  my  head,  and  I  saw  that  what  he  had  seen  in  Ven- 
ice so  long  before  was  so  true  that  it  was  the  very  life 
of  Venice  in  my  own  day ;  and  because  I  have  loved 
the  truth  in  art  above  all  other  things,  I  fell  instantly 
and  lastingly  in  love  with  Carlo  Goldoni.  I  was  read- 
ing his  memoirs,  and  learning  to  know  his  sweet,  hon- 
est, simple  nature  while  I  was  learning  to  know  his 
work,  and  I  wish  that  every  one  who  reads  his  plays 
would  read  his  life  as  well ;  one  must  know  him  be- 
fore one  can  fully  know  them.  I  believe,  in  fact,  that 
his  autobiography  came  into  my  hands  first.  But,  at 
any  rate,  both  are  associated  with  the  fervors  and  lan- 
guors of  that  first  summer  in  Venice,  so  that  I  cannot 
take  up  a  book  of  Goldoni's  without  a  renewed  sense 
of  that  sunlight  and  moonlight,  and  of  the  sounds  and 


GOLDONI,    MANZONI,    D'AZEGLIO.  209 

silences  of  a  city  that  is  at  once  the  stillest  and  shrill- 
est in  the  world. 

Perhaps  because  I  never  found  his  work  of  great 
ethical  or  aesthetical  proportions,  but  recognized  that 
it  pretended  to  be  good  only  within  its  strict  limita- 
tions, I  recur  to  it  now  without  that  painful  feeling  of 
a  diminished  grandeur  in  it,  which  attends  us  so  often 
when  we  go  back  to  something  that  once  greatly 
pleased  us.  It  seemed  to  me  at  the  time  that  I  must 
have  read  all  his  comedies  in  Venice,  but  I  kept  read- 
ing new  ones  after  I  came  home,  and  still  I  can  take 
a  volume  of  his  from  the  shelf,  and  when  thirty  years 
are  past,  find  a  play  or  two  that  I  missed  before. 
Their  number  is  very  great,  but  perhaps  those  that  I 
fancy  I  have  not  read,  I  have  really  read  once  or  more 
and  forgotten.  That  might  very  easily  be,  for  there 
is  seldom  anything  more  poignant  in  any  one  of  them 
than  there  is  in  the  average  course  of  things.  The 
plays  are  light  and  amusing  transcripts  from  life,  for 
the  most  part,  and  where  at  times  they  deepen  into 
powerful  situations,  or  express  strong  emotions,  they 
do  so  with  persons  so  little  different  freffn  the  average 
of  our  acquaintance  that  we  do  not  remember  just  who 
the  persons  are. 

There  is  no  doubt  but  the  kindly  playwright  had 
O 


210  MY    LITERARY   PASSIONS. 

his  conscience,  and  meant  to  make  people  think  as 
well  as  laugh.  I  know  of  none  of  his  plays  that  is  of 
wrong  effect,  or  that  violates  the  instincts  of  purity, 
or  insults  common  sense  with  the  romantic  pretense 
that  wrong  will  be  right  if  you  will  only  paint  it  rose- 
color.  He  is  at  some  obvious  pains  to  "  punish  vice 
and  reward  virtue,"  but  I  do  not  mean  that  easy  mo- 
rality when  I  praise  his ;  I  mean  the  more  difficult  sort 
that  recognizes  in  each  man's  soul  the  arbiter  not  of 
his  fate  surely,  but  surely  of  his  peace.  He  never 
makes  a  fool  of  the  spectator  by  feigning  that  passion 
is  a  reason  or  justification,  or  that  suffering  of  one 
kind  can  atone  for  wrong  of  another.  That  was  left 
for  the  romanticists  of  our  own  century  to  discover ; 
even  the  romanticists  whom  Goldoni  drove  from  the 
stage,  were  of  that  simpler  eighteenth-century  sort 
who  had  not  yet  liberated  the  individual  from  society, 
but  held  him  accountable  in  the  old  way.  As  for 
Goldoni  him  self,  he  apparently  never  dreams  of  trans- 
gression ;  he  is  of  rather  an  explicit  conventionality  in 
most  things,  and  he  deals  with  society  as  something 
finally  settled.  How  artfully  he  deals  with  it,  how 
decently,  how  wholesomely,  those  who  know  Venetian 
society  of  the  eighteenth  century  historically  will  per- 
ceive when  they  recall  the  adequate  impression  he 


GOLDONI,  MAXZOXI,  D'AZEGLIO.  211 

gives  of  it  without  offense  in  character  or  language  or 
situation.  This  is  the  perpetual  miracle  of  his  come- 
dy, that  it  says  so  much  to  experience  and  worldly 
wisdom,  and  so  little  to  inexperience  and  worldly  in- 
nocence. No  doubt  the  Serenest  Republic  was  very 
strict  with  the  theatre,  and  suffered  it  to  hold  the 
mirror  up  to  nature  only  when  nature  was  behaving 
well,  or  at  least  behaving  as  if  young  people  were 
present.  Yet  the  Italians  are  rather  plain-spoken,  and 
they  recognize  facts  which  our  company  manners  at 
least  do  not  admit  the  existence  of.  I  should  say  that 
Goldoni  was  almost  English,  almost  American,  indeed, 
in  his  observance  of  the  proprieties,  and  I  like  this  in 
him ;  though  the  proprieties  are  not  virtues,  they  are 
very  good  things,  and  at  least  are  better  than  the  im- 
proprieties. 

This,  however,  I  must  own,  had  not  a  great  deal  to 
do  with  my  liking  him  so  much,  and  I  should  be  puz- 
zled to  account  for  my  passion,  as  much  in  his  case 
as  in  most  others.  If  there  was  any  reason  for  it,  per- 
haps it  was  that  he  had  the  power  of  taking  me  out 
of  my  life,  and  putting  me  into  the  lives  of  others, 
whom  I  felt  to  be  human  beings  as  much  as  myself. 
To  make  one  live  in  others,  this  is  the  highest  effect 
of  religion  as  well  as  of  art,  and  possibly  it  will  bo  the 


212  MY     LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

highest  bliss  we  shall  ever  know.  I  do  not  pretend 
that  my  translation  was  through  my  unselfishness ;  it 
was  distinctly  through  that  selfishness  which  perceives 
that  self  is  misery ;  and  I  may  as  well  confess  here 
that  I  do  not  regard  the  artistic  ecstasy  as  in  any  sort 
noble.  It  is  not  noble  to  love  the  beautiful,  or  to  live 
for  it,  or  by  it ;  and  it  may  even  not  be  refining.  I 
would  not  have  any  reader  of  mine,  looking  forward 
to  some  aesthetic  career,  suppose  that  this  love  is  any 
merit  in  itself ;  it  may  be  the  grossest  egotism.  If 
you  cannot  look  beyond  the  end  you  aim  at,  and  seek 
the  good  which  is  not  your  own,  all  your  sacrifice  is 
to  yourself  and  not  of  yourself,  and  you  might  as  well 
be  going  into  business.  In  itself  and  for  itself  it  is 
no  more  honorable  to  win  fame  than  to  make  money, 
and  the  wish  to  do  the  one  is  no  more  elevating  than 
the  wish  to  do  the  other. 

But  in  the  days  I  write  of  I  had  no  conception  of 
this,  and  I  am  sure  that  my  blindness  to  so  plain  a 
fact  kept  me  even  from  seeking  and  knowing  the 
highest  beauty  in  the  things  I  worshiped.  I  believe 
that  if  I  had  been  sensible  of  it  I  should  have  read 
much  more  of  such  humane  Italian  poets  and  novelists 
as  Manzoni  and  D'Azeglio,  whom  I  perceived  to  be 
delightful,  without  dreaming  of  them  in  the  length 


GOLDONI,  MANZOXI,  D'AZEGLIO.  213 

and  breadth  of  their  goodness.  Now  and  then  its  ex- 
tent flashed  upon  me,  but  the  glimpse  was  lost  to  my 
retroverted  vision  almost  as  soon  as  won.  It  is  only 
in  thinking  back  to  them  that  I  can  realize  how  much 
they  might  always  have  meant  to  me.  They  were 
both  living  in  my  time  in  Italy,  and  they  were  two 
men  whom  I  should  now  like  very  much  to  have  seen, 
if  I  could  have  done  so  without  that  futility  which 
seems  to  attend  every  effort  to  pay  one's  duty  to  such 
men. 

The  love  of  country  in  all  the  Italian  poets  and  ro- 
mancers of  the  long  period  of  the  national  resurrec- 
tion ennobled  their  art  in  a  measure  which  criticism 
has  not  yet  taken  account  of.  I  conceived  of  its  effect 
then,  but  I  conceived  of  it  as  a  misfortune,  a  fatality ; 
now  I  am  by  no  means  sure  that  it  was  so ;  hereafter 
the  creation  of  beauty,  as  we  call  it,  for  beauty's  sake, 
may  be  considered  something  monstrous.  There  is 
forever  a  poignant  meaning  in  life  beyond  what  mere 
living  involves,  and  why  should  not  there  be  this  ref- 
erence in  art  to  the  ends  beyond  art  ?  The  situation, 
the  long  patience,  the  hope  against  hope,  dignified  and 
beautified  the  nature  of  the  Italian  writers  of  that  day, 
and  evoked  from  them  a  quality  which  I  was  too  little 
trained  in  their  school  to  appreciate.  But  in  a  sort  I 


214  MY     LITERARY     PASSIONS. 

did  feel  it,  I  did  know  it  in  them  all,  so  far  as  I  knew 
any  of  them,  and  in  the  tragedies  of  Manzoni,  and  in 
the  romances  of  D'Azeglio,  and  yet  more  in  the  simple 
and  modest  records  of  D'Azeglio's  life  published  after 
his  death,  I  profited  by  it,  and  unconsciously  prepared 
myself  for  that  point  of  view  whence  all  the  arts  ap- 
pear one  with  all  the  uses,  and  there  is  nothing  beau- 
tiful that  is  false. 

I  am  very  glad  of  that  experience  of  Italian  litera- 
ture, which  I  look  back  upon  as  altogether  wholesome 
and  sanative,  after  my  excesses  of  Heine.  No  doubt 
it  was  all  a  minor  affair  as  compared  with  equal  knowl- 
edge of  French  literature,  and  so  far  it  was  a  loss  of 
time.  It  is  idle  to  dispute  the  general  positions  of 
criticism,  and  there  is  no  useful  gainsaying  its  judg- 
ment that  French  literature  is  a  major  literature  and 
Italian  a  minor  literature  in  this  century ;  but  whether 
this  verdict  will  stand  for  all  time,  there  may  be  a  rea- 
sonable doubt.  Criterions  may  change,  and  hereafter 
people  may  look  at  the  whole  affair  so  differently  that 
a  literature  which  went  to  the  making  of  a  people  will 
not  be  accounted  a  minor  literature,  but  will  take  its 
place  with  the  great  literary  movements. 

I  do  not  insist  upon  this  possibility,  and  I  am  far 
from  defending  myself  for  liking  the  comedies  of 


GOLDONI,    MANZONI,    D'AZEGLIO.  215 

Goldoni  better  than  the  comedies  of  Moliere,  upon 
purely  aesthetic  grounds,  where  there  is  no  question  as 
to  the  artistic  quality.  Perhaps  it  is  because  I  came 
to  Moliere's  comedies  later,  and  with  my  taste  formed 
for  those  of  Goldoni ;  but  again,  it  is  here  a  matter 
of  affection ;  I  find  Goldoni  for  me  more  sympathetic, 
and  because  he  is  more  sympathetic  I  cannot  do  oth- 
erwise than  find  him  more  natural,  more  true.  I 
will  allow  that  this  is  vulnerable,  and  as  I  say,  I  do 
not  defend  it.  Moliere  has  a  place  in  literature  infi- 
nitely loftier  than  Goldoni's ;  and  he  has  supplied 
types,  characters,  phrases,  to  the  currency  of  thought, 
and  Goldoni  has  supplied  none.  It  is,  therefore,  with- 
out reason  which  I  can  allege  that  I  enjoy  Goldoni 
more.  I  am  perfectly  willing  to  be  rated  low  for  my 
preference,  and  yet  I  think  that  if  it  had  been  Goldo- 
ni's luck  to  have  had  the  great  age  of  a  mighty  mon- 
archy for  his  scene,  instead  of  the  decline  of  an 
outworn  republic,  his  place  in  literature  might  have 
been  different. 


XXX. 

PASTOR    FIDO,    AMINTA,     ROMOLA,    YEAST, 
PAUL  FERROLL. 

BUT  I  have  always  had  a  great  love  for  the  abso- 
lutely unreal,  the  purely  fanciful  in  all  the  arts,  as 
well  as  of  the  absolutely  real  ;  I  like  the  one  on  a  far 
lower  plane  than  the  other,  but  it  delights  me,  as  a 
pantomime  at  a  theatre  does,  or  a  comic  opera,  which 
has  its  being  wholly  outside  the  realm  of  the  proba- 
bilities. When  I  once  transport  myself  to  this  sphere 
I  have  no  longer  any  care  for  them,  and  if  I  could  I 
would  not  exact  of  them  an  allegiance  which  has  no 
concern  with  them.  For  this  reason  I  have  always 
vastly  enjoyed  the  artificialities  of  pastoral  poetry; 
and  in  Venice  I  read  with  a  pleasure  few  serious 
poems  have  given  me  the  Pastor  Fido  of  Guarini.  I 
came  later  but  not  with  fainter  zest  to  the  Aminta  of 
Tasso,  without  which,  perhaps,  the  Pastor  Fido  would 
not  have  been,  and  I  reveled  in  the  pretty  impossibil- 


PASTOR   FIDO,    AMINTA,    AND    OTHERS.        217 

ities  of  both  these  charming  effects  of  the  liberated 
imagination. 

I  do  not  the  least  condemn  that  sort  of  thing ;  one 
does  not  live  by  sweets,  unless  one  is  willing  to  spoil 
one's  teeth  and  digestion ;  but  one  may  now  and  then 
indulge  one's  self  without  harm,  and  a  sugar  plum  or 
two  after  dinner  may  even  be  of  advantage.  What  I 
object  to  is  the  romantic  thing  which  asks  to  be  ac- 
cepted with  all  its  fantasticality  on  the  ground  of 
reality  ;  that  seems  to  me  hopelessly  bad.  But  I  have 
been  able  to  dwell  in  their  charming  out-land  or  no- 
land  with  the  shepherds  and  shepherdesses  and 
nymphs,  satyrs  and  fauns,  of  Tasso  and  Guarini,  and 
I  take  the  finest  pleasure  in  their  company,  their  Dres- 
den china  loves  and  sorrows,  their  airy  raptures,  their 
painless  throes,  their  polite  anguish,  their  tears  not 
the  least  salt,  but  flowing  as  sweet  as  the  purling 
streams  of  their  enameled  meadows.  I  wish  there 
were  more  of  that  sort  of  writing  ;  I  should  like  very 
much  to  read  it. 

The  greater  part  of  my  reading  in  Venice,  when  I 
began  to  find  that  I  could  not  help  writing  about  the 
place,  was  in  books  relating  to  its  life  and  history, 
which  I  made  use  of  rather  than  found  pleasure  in. 
My  studies  in  Italian  literature  were  full  of  the  most 


218  MY     LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

charming  interest,  and  if  I  had  to  read  a  good  many 
books  for  conscience'  sake,  there  were  a  good  many 
others  I  read  for  their  own  sake.  They  were  chiefly 
poetry ;  and  after  the  first  essays  in  which  I  tasted  the 
classic  poets,  they  were  chiefly  the  books  of  the  mod- 
ern poets. 

For  the  present  I  went  no  farther  in  German  litera- 
ture, and  I  recurred  to  it  in  later  years  only  for  deeper 
and  fuller  knowledge  of  Heine ;  my  Spanish  was  ig- 
nored, as  all  first  loves  are  when  one  has  reached  the 
age  of  twenty-six.  My  English  reading  was  almost 
wholly  in  the  Tauchnitz  editions,  for  otherwise  Eng- 
lish books  were  not  easily  come  at  then  and  there. 
George  Eliot's  Romola  was  then  new,  and  I  read  it 
again  and  again  with  the  sense  of  moral  enlargement 
which  the  first  fiction  to  conceive  of  the  true  nature  of 
evil  gave  all  of  us  who  were  young  in  that  day.  Tito 
Malemma  was  not  only  a  lesson,  he  was  a  revelation, 
and  I  trembled  before  him  as  in  the  presence  of  a 
warning  and  a  message  from  the  only  veritable  perdi- 
tion. His  life,  in  which  so  much  that  was  good  was 
mixed  with  so  much  that  was  bad,  lighted  up  the  whole 
domain  of  egotism  with  its  glare,  and  made  one  feel 
how  near  the  best  and  the  worst  were  to  each  other, 
and  how  thev  sometimes  touched  without  absolute  di- 


PASTOR    FIDO,    AMINTA,    AND    OTHERS.        219 

vision  in  texture  and  color.  The  book  was  undoubtedly 
a  favorite  of  mine,  and  I  did  not  see  then  the  artistic 
falterings  in  it  which  were  afterward  evident  to  me. 

There  were  not  Romolas  to  read  all  the  time, 
though,  and  I  had  to  devolve  upon  inferior  authors  for 
my  fiction  the  greater  part  of  the  time.  Of  course,  I 
kept  up  with  Our  Mutual  Friend,  which  Dickens  was 
then  writing,  and  with  Philip,  which  was  to  be '  the 
last  of  Thackeray.  I  was  not  yet  sufficiently  instructed 
to  appreciate  Trollope,  and  I  did  not  read  him  at  all. 

I  got  hold  of  Kingsley,  and  read  Yeast,  and  I  think 
some  other  novels  of  his,  with  great  relish,  and  with- 
out sensibility  to  his  Charles  Readeish  lapses  from  his 
art  into  the  material  of  his  art.  But  of  all  the  minor 
fiction  that  I  read  at  this  time  none  impressed  me  so 
much  as  three  books  which  had  then  already  had  their 
vogue,  and  which  I  knew  somewhat  from  reviews. 
They  were  Paul  Ferroll,  Why  Paul  Ferroll  killed  his 
Wife,  and  Day  after  Day.  The  first  two  were,  of 
course,  related  to  each  other,  and  they  were  all  three 
full  of  unwholesome  force.  As  to  their  aesthetic  merit 
I  will  not  say  anything,  for  I  have  not  looked  at  either 
of  the  books  for  thirty  years.  I  fancy,  however,  that 
their  strength  was  rather  of  the  tetanic  than  the  titanic 
sort.  They  made  your  sympathies  go  with  the  hero, 


220  MY     LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

who  deliberately  puts  his  wife  to  death  for  the  lie  she 
told  to  break  off  his  marriage  with  the  woman  he  had 
loved,  and  who  then  marries  this  tender  and  gentle 
girl,  and  lives  in  great  happiness  with  her  till  her 
death.  Murder  in  the  first  degree  is  flattered  by  his 
fate  up  to  the  point  of  letting  him  die  peacefully  in 
Boston  after  these  dealings  of  his  in  England ;  and  al- 
together his  story  could  not  be  commended  to  people 
with  a  morbid  taste  for  bloodshed.  Naturally  enough 
the  books  were  written  by  a  perfectly  good  woman, 
the  wife  of  an  English  clergyman,  whose  friends  were 
greatly  scandalized  by  them.  As  a  sort  of  atonement 
she  wrote  Day  after  Day,  the  story  of  a  dismal  and 
joyless  orphan,  who  dies  to  the  sound  of  angelic  mu- 
sic, faint  and  far-heard,  filling  the  whole  chamber.  A 
carefuller  study  of  the  phenomenon  reveals  the  fact 
that  the  seraphic  strains  are  produced  by  the  steam 
escaping  from  the  hot-water  bottles  at  the  feet  of  the 
invalid. 

As  usual,  I  am  not  able  fully  to  account  for  my 
liking  of  these  books,  and  I  am  so  far  from  wishing 
to  justify  it  that  I  think  I  ought  rather  to  excuse  it. 
But  since  I  was  really  greatly  fascinated  with  them, 
and  read  them  with  an  ever-growing  fascination,  the 
only  honest  thing  to  do  is  to  own  my  subjection  to 


PASTOR   FIDO,    AMINTA,    AND    OTHERS.        221 

them.  It  would  be  an  interesting  and  important  ques- 
tion for  criticism  to  study,  that  question  why  certain 
books  at  a  certain  time  greatly  dominate  our  fancy, 
and  others  manifestly  better  have  no  influence  with 
us.  A  curious  proof  of  the  subtlety  of  these  Paul  Fer- 
roll  books  in  the  appeal  they  made  to  the  imagination 
is  the  fact  that  I  came  to  them  fresh  from  Romola, 
and  full  of  horror  for  myself  in  Tito ;  yet  I  sympa- 
thized throughout  with  Paul  Ferroll,  and  was  glad 
when  he  got  away. 


XXXI. 

J.  W.  DE  FOREST,  HENRY  JAMES,  ERCKMANN- 
CHATRIAN,   BJORSTJERNE  BJORNSON. 

ON  my  return  to  America,  my  literary  life  immedi- 
ately took  such  form  that  most  of  my  reading  was 
done  for  review.  I  wrote  at  first  a  good  many  of  the 
lighter  criticisms  in  The  Nation,  at  New  York,  and 
after  I  went  to  Boston  to  become  the  assistant  editor 
of  the  Atlantic  Monthly  I  wrote  the  literary  notices  in 
that  periodical  for  four  or  five  years. 

It  was  only  when  I  came  into  full  charge  of  the 
magazine  that  I  began  to  share  these  labors  with  oth- 
ers, and  I  continued  them  in  some  measure  as  long  as 
I  had  any  relation  to  it.  My  reading  for  reading's 
sake,  as  I  had  hitherto  done  it,  was  at  an  end,  and  I 
read  primarily  for  the  sake  of  writing  about  the  book 
in  hand,  and  secondarily  for  the  pleasure  it  might 
give  me.  This  was  always  considerable,  and  some- 
times so  great  that  I  forgot  the  critic  in  it,  and  read 


J.    W.    DE    FOREST    AND    OTHERS.  223 

on  and  on  for  pleasure.  I  was  master  to  review  this 
book  or  that  as  I  chose,  and  generally  I  reviewed  only 
books  I  liked  to  read,  though  sometimes  I  felt  that  I 
ought  to  do  a  book,  and  did  it  from  a  sense  of  duty ; 
these  perfunctory  criticisms  I  do  not  think  were  very 
.useful,  but  I  tried  to  make  them  honest. 

Among  the  first  books  that  came  to  my  hand  was  a 
novel  of  J.  W.  De  Forest,  which  I  think  the  best 
novel  suggested  by  the  civil  war.  If  this  is  not  say- 
ing very  much  for  Miss  RaveneFs  Conversion,  I  will  go 
farther  and  say  it  was  one  of  the  best  American  novels 
that  I  had  known,  and  was  of  an  advanced  realism, 
before  realism  was  known*  by  name.  I  had  a  passion 
for  that  book,  and  for  all  the  books  of  that  author ; 
and  if  I  have  never  been  able  to  make  the  public  care 
for  them  as  much  as  I  did  it  has  not  been  for  want  of 
trying.  Kate  Beaumont,  Honest  John  Vane,  Playing 
the  Mischief,  are  admirable  fictions,  sprung  from  our 
own  life,  of  strong  fibre  and  firm  growth ;  all  that  Mr. 
De  Forest  has  written  is  of  a  texture  and  color  dis- 
tinctly his  own ;  his  short  stories  are  as  good  as  his 
long  ones.  I  have  thought  it  more  discreditable  to 
our  taste  than  to  his  talent  that  he  has  not  been  rec- 
ognized as  one  of  our  foremost  novelists,  for  his  keen 
and  accurate  touch  in  character,  his  wide  scope,  and 


224  MY     LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

his  unerring  rendition  of  whatever  he  has  attempted 
to  report  of  American  life ;  but  I  do  not  know  that  I 
shall  ever  persuade  either  critics  or  readers  to  think 
with  me. 

At  the  same  time  that  I  made  the  acquaintance  of 
this  writer  I  came  to  a  knowledge  of  Mr.  Henry 
James's  wonderful  workmanship  in  the  first  manuscript 
of  his  that  passed  through  my  hands  as  a  sub-editor. 
I  fell  in  love  with  it  instantly,  and  I  have  never  ceased 
to  delight  in  that  exquisite  artistry.  I  have  read  all 
that  he  has  written,  and  I  have  never  read  anything  of 
his  without  an  ecstatic  pleasure  in  his  unrivaled  touch. 
In  literary  handling  no  one  who  has  written  fiction  in 
our  language  can  approach  him,  and  his  work  has 
shown  an  ever-deepening  insight.  I  have  my  reserves 
in  regard  to  certain  things  of  his ;  if  hard  pressed  I 
might  even  undertake  to  better  him  here  and  there, 
but  after  I  had  done  that  I  doubt  if  I  should  like  him 
so  well.  In  fact,  I  prefer  to  let  him  alone,  to  take  him 
for  what  he  is  in  himself,  and  to  be  grateful  for  every 
new  thing  that  comes  from  his  pen.  I  will  not  try  to 
say  why  his  works  take  me  so  much ;  that  is  no  part 
of  my  business  in  these  papers,  and  I  can  understand 
why  other  people  are  not  taken  at  all  with  him,  for  no 
reason  that  they  can  give,  either.  At  the  same  time, 


J.    W.    DE   FOREST    AND    OTHERS.  225 

I  have  no  patience  with  them,  and  but  small  regard 
for  their  taste. 

In  a  long  sickness,  which  I  had  shortly  after  I  went 
to  live  in  Cambridge,  a  friend  brought  me  several  of 
the  stories  of  Erckmann-Chatrian,  whom  people  were 
then  reading  much  more  than  they  are  now,  I  believe ; 
and  I  had  a  great  joy  in  them,  which  I  have  renewed 
since  as  often  as  I  have  read  one  of  their  books.  They 
have  much  the  same  quality  of  simple  and  sincerely 
moralized  realism  that  I  found  afterward  in  the  work 
of  the  early  Swiss  realist,  Jeremias  Gotthelf,  and  very 
likely  it  was  this  that  captivated  my  judgment.  As 
for  my  affections,  battered  and  exhausted  as  they 
ought  to  have  been  in  many  literary  passions,  they 
never  went  out  with  fresher  enjoyment  than  they  did 
to  the  charming  story  of  L'Ami  Fritz,  which,  when  I 
merely  name  it,  breathes  the  spring  sun  and  air  about 
me,  and  fills  my  senses  with  the  beauty  and  sweetness 
of  cherry  blossoms.  It  is  a  lovely  book,  one  of  the 
loveliest  and  kindest  that  ever  was  written,  and  my 
heart  belongs  to  it  still ;  to  be  sure  it  belongs  to  sev- 
eral hundreds  of  other  books  in  equal  entirety. 

It  belongs  to  all  the  books  of  the  great  Norwegian 
Bjorstjerne  Bjornson,  whose  Arne,  and  whose  Happy 
Boy,  and  whose  Fisher  Maiden  iVead  in  this  same  for- 
P 


226  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

tunate  sickness.  I  have  since  read  every  other  book 
of  his  that  I  could  lay  hands  on :  Sinnove  Solbakken, 
and  Magnhild,  and  Captain  Manzana,  and  Dust,  and 
In  God's  Ways,  and  Sigurd,  and  plays  like  The  Glove 
and  The  Bankrupt.  He  has  never,  as  some  authors 
have,  dwindled  in  my  sense ;  when  I  open  his  page, 
there  I  find  him  as  large,  and  free  and  bold  as  ever. 
He  is  a  great  talent,  a  clear  conscience,  a  beautiful 
art.  He  has  my  love  not  only  because  he  is  a  poet  of 
the  most  exquisite  verity,  but  because  he  is  a  lover  of 
men,  with  a  faith  in  them  such  as  can  move  mount- 
ains of  ignorance,  and  dullness,  and  greed.  He  is  next 
to  Tolstoy  in  his  willingness  to  give  himself  for  his 
kind ;  if  he  would  rather  give  himself  in  fighting  than 
in  suffering  wrong,  I  do  not  know  that  his  self-sacri- 
fice is  less  in  degree. 

I  confess,  however,  that  I  do  not  think  of  him  as  a 
patriot  and  a  socialist  when  I  read  him ;  he  is  then 
purely  a  poet,  whose  gift  holds  me  rapt  above  the 
world  where  I  have  left  my  troublesome  and  weari- 
some self  for  the  time.  I  do  not  know  of  any  novels 
that  a  young  endeavorer  in  fiction  could  more  profit- 
ably read  than  his  for  their  large  and  simple  method, 
their  trust  of  the  reader's  intelligence,  their  sympathy 
with  life.  With  him  the  problems  are  all  soluble  by 


J.    W.    DE    FOREST    AND    OTHERS.  227 

the  enlightened  and  regenerate  will ;  there  is  no  baf- 
fling Fate,  but  a  helping  God.  In  Bjornson  there  is 
nothing  of  Ibsen's  scornful  despair,  nothing  of  his  an- 
archistic contempt,  but  his  art  is  full  of  the  warmth 
and  color  of  a  poetic  soul,  with  no  touch  of  the  icy 
cynicism  which  freezes  you  in  the  other.  I  have  felt 
the  cold  fascination  of  Ibsen,  too,  and  I  should  be  far 
from  denying  his  mighty  mastery,  but  he  has  never 
possessed  me  with  the  delight  that  Bjornson  has. 

In  those  days  I  read  not  only  all  the  new  books,  but 
I  made  many  forays  into  the  past,  and  came  back  now 
and  then  with  rich  spoil,  though  I  confess  that  for  the 
most  part  I  had  my  trouble  for  my  pains ;  and  I  wish 
now  that  I  had  given  the  time  I  spent  on  the  English 
classics  to  contemporary  literature,  which  I  have  not 
the  least  hesitation  in  saying  I  like  vastly  better.  In 
fact,  I  believe  that  the  preference  for  the  literature  of 
the  past,  except  in  the  case  of  the  greatest  masters,  is 
mainly  the  affectation  of  people  who  cannot  otherwise 
distinguish  themselves  from  the  herd,  and  who  wish 
very  much  to  do  so. 

There  is  much  to  be  learned  from  the  minor  novel- 
ists and  poets  of  the  past  about  people's  ways  of 
thinking  and  feeling,  but  not  much  that  the  masters 
do  not  give  you  in  better  quality  and  fuller  measure ; 


228  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

and  I  should  say,  Read  the  old  masters  and  let  their 
schools  go,  rather  than  neglect  any  possible  master  of 
your  own  time.  Above  all,  I  would  not  have  any  one 
read  an  old  author  merely  that  he  might  not  be  igno- 
rant of  him ;  that  is  most  beggarly,  and  no  good  can 
come  of  it.  When  literature  becomes  a  duty  it  ceases 
to  be  a  passion,  and  all  the  schoolmastering  in  the 
world,  solemnly  addressed  to  the  conscience,  cannot 
make  the  fact  otherwise.  It  is  well  to  read  for  the 
sake  of  knowing  a  certain  ground  if  you  are  to  make 
use  of  your  knowledge  in  a  certain  way,  but  it  would 
be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  this  is  a  love  of  literature. 


XXXII. 

TOURGUENIEF,  AUERBACH. 

IN  those  years  at  Cambridge  my  most  notable  liter- 
ary experience  without  doubt  was  the  knowledge  of 
Tourguenief's  novels,  which  began  to  be  recognized 
in  all  their  greatness  about  the  middle  seventies.  I 
think  they  made  their  way  with  such  of  our  public  as 
were  able  to  appreciate  them  before  they  were  ac- 
cepted in  England ;  but  that  does  not  matter.  It  is 
enough  for  the  present  purpose  that  Smoke,  and  Lisa, 
and  On  the  Eve,  and  Dimitri  Roudine,  and  Spring 
Floods,  passed  one  after  another  through  my  hands, 
and  that  I  formed  for  their  author  one  of  the  pro- 
foundest  literary  passions  of  my  life. 

I  now  think  that  there  is  a  finer  and  truer  method 
than  his,  but  in  its  way,  Tourguenief's  method  is  as 
far  as  art  can  go.  That  is  to  say,  his  fiction  is  to  the 
last  degree  dramatic.  The  persons  are  sparely  de- 
scribed, and  briefly  accounted  for,  and  then  they  are 
left  to  transact  their  affair,  whatever  it  is,  with  the 
least  possible  comment  or  explanation  from  the  author. 
The  effect  flows  naturally  from  their  characters,  and 


230  MY    LITERARY     PASSIONS. 

when  they  have  done  or  said  a  thing  you  conjecture 
why  as  unerringly  as  you  would  if  they  were  people 
whom  you  knew  outside  of  a  book.  I  had  already 
conceived  of  the  possibility  of  this  from  Bjornson, 
who  practices  the  same  method,  but  I  was  still  too 
sunken  in  the  gross  darkness  of  English  fiction  to  rise 
to  a  full  consciousness  of  its  excellence.  When  I  re- 
membered the  deliberate  and  impertinent  moralizing 
of  Thackeray,  the  clumsy  exegesis  of  George  Eliot,  the 
knowing  nods  and  winks  of  Charles  Reade,  the  stage- 
carpentering  and  lime-lighting  of  Dickens,  even  the 
fine  and  important  analysis  of  Hawthorne,  it  was  with 
a  joyful  astonishment  that  I  realized  the  great  art  of 
Tourguenief. 

Here  was  a  master  who  was  apparently  not  trying 
to  work  out  a  plot,  who  was  not  even  trying  to  work 
out  a  character,  but  was  standing  aside  from  the  whole 
affair,  and  letting  the  characters  work  the  plot  out. 
The  method  was  revealed  perfectly  in  Smoke,  but  each 
successive  book  of  his  that  I  read  was  a  fresh  proof  of 
its  truth,  a  revelation  of  its  transcendent  superiority. 
I  think  now  that  I  exaggerated  its  value  somewhat ; 
but  this  was  inevitable  in  the  first  surprise.  The  sane 
aesthetics  of  the  first  Russian  author  I  read,  however, 
have  seemed  more  and  more  an  essential  part  of  the 


TOURGTJENIEF,    ATJERBACH.  231 

sane  ethics  of  all  the  Russians  I  have  read.  It  was 
not  only  that  Tourgueriief  had  painted  life  truly,  but 
that  he  had  painted  it  conscientiously. 

Tourguenief  was  of  that  great  race  which  has  more 
than  any  other  fully  and  freely  uttered  human  nature, 
without  either  false  pride  or  false  shame  in  its  naked- 
ness. His  themes  were  oftenest  those  of  the  French 
novelist,  but  how  far  he  was  from  handling  them  in 
the  French  manner  and  with  the  French  spirit !  In  his 
hands  sin  suffered  no  dramatic  punishment ;  it  did  not 
always  show  itself  as  unhappiness,  in  the  personal 
sense,  but  it  was  always  unrest,  and  without  the  hope 
of  peace.  If  the  end  did  not  appear,  the  fact  that  it 
must  be  miserable  always  appeared.  Life  showed  it- 
self to  me  in  different  colors  after  I  had  once  read 
Tourguenief ;  it  became  more  serious,  more  awful,  and 
with  mystical  responsibilities  I  had  not  known  before. 
My  gay  American  horizons  were  bathed  in  the  vast 
melancholy  of  the  Slav,  patient,  agnostic,  trustful.  At 
the  same  time  nature  revealed  herself  to  me  through 
him  with  an  intimacy  she  had  not  hitherto  shown  me. 
There  are  passages  in  this  wonderful  writer  alive  with 
a  truth  that  seems  drawn  from  the  reader's  own  knowl- 
edge :  who  else  but  Tourguenief  and  one's  own  most 
secret  self  ever  felt  all  the  rich,  sad  meaning  of  the 


232  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

night  air  drawing  in  at  the  open  window,  of  the  fires 
burning  in  the  darkness  on  the  distant  fields  ?  I  try 
in  vain  to  give  some  notion  of  the  subtle  sympathy 
with  nature  which  scarcely  put  itself  into  words  with 
him.  As  for  the  people  of  his  fiction,  though  they 
were  of  orders  and  civilizations  so  remote  from  my 
experience,  they  were  of  the  eternal  human  types 
whose  origin  and  potentialities  every  one  may  find  in 
his  own  heart,  and  I  felt  their  verity  in  every  touch. 
I  cannot  describe  the  satisfaction  his  work  gave  me ; 
I  can  only  impart  some  sense  of  it,  perhaps,  by  saying 
that  it  was  like  a  happiness  I  had  been  waiting  for  all 
my  life,  and  now  that  it  had  come,  I  was  richly  con- 
tent forever.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  art  of 
Tourguenief  surpasses  the  art  of  Bjornson ;  I  think 
Bjornson  is  quite  as  fine  and  true.  But  the  Norwe- 
gian deals  with  simple  and  primitive  circumstances  for 
the  most  part,  and  always  with  a  small  world  ;  and  the 
Russian  has  to  do  with  human  nature  inside  of  its 
conventional  shells,  and  his  scene  is  often  as  large  as 
Europe.  Even  when  it  is  as  remote  as  Norway,  it  is 
still  related  to  the  great  capitals  by  the  history  if  not 
the  actuality  of  the  characters.  Most  of  Tourguenief 's 
books  I  have  read  many  times  over,  all  of  them  I  have 
read  more  than  twice.  For  a  number  of  years  I  read 


TOURGUENIEF,     AUEBBACH.  233 

them  again  and  again  without  much  caring  for  other 
fiction.  It  was  only  the  other  day  that  I  read  Smoke 
through  once  more,  with  no  diminished  sense  of  its 
truth,  but  with  somewhat  less  than  my  first  satisfaction 
in  its  art.  Perhaps  this  was  because  I  had  reached 
the  point  through  my  acquaintance  with  Tolstoy  where 
I  was  impatient  even  of  the  artifice  that  hid  itself.  In 
Smoke  I  was  now  aware  of  an  artifice  that  kept  out 
of  sight,  but  was  still  always  present  somewhere,  in- 
visibly operating  the  story. 

I  must  not  fail  to  own  the  great  pleasure  that  I 
have  had  in  some  of  the  stories  of  Auerbach.  It  is 
true  that  I  have  never  cared  greatly  for  On  the 
Heights,  which  in  its  dealing  with  royalties  seems  too 
far  aloof  from  the  ordinary  human  life,  and  which  on 
the  moral  side  finally  fades  out  into  a  German  misti- 
ness. But  I  speak  of  it  with  the  imperfect  knowledge 

of  one  who  was  never  able  to  read  it  quite  through, 

• 
and  I  have  really  no  right  to  speak  of  it.     The  book 

of  his  that  pleased  me  most  was  Edelweiss,  which, 
though  the  story  was  somewhat  too  catastrophical, 
seemed  to  me  admirably  good  and  true.  I  still  think 
it  very  delicately  done,  and  with  a  deep  insight ;  but 
there  is  something  in  all  Auerbach's  work  which  in 
the  retrospect  affects  me  as  if  it  dealt  with  pigmies. 


XXXIII. 
CERTAIN  PREFERENCES  AND  EXPERIENCES. 

I  HAVE  always  loved  history,  whether  in  the  annals 
of  peoples  or  in  the  lives  of  persons,  and  I  have  at 
all  times  read  it.  I  am  not  sure  but  I  rather  prefer  it 
to  fiction,  though  I  am  aware  that  in  looking  back 
over  this  record  of  my  literary  passions  I  must  seem 
to  have  cared  for  very  little  besides  fiction.  I  read  at 
the  time  I  have  just  been  speaking  of,  nearly  all  the 
new  poetry  as  it  came  out,  and  I  constantly  recurred 
to  it  in  its  mossier  sources,  where  it  sprang  from  the 
green  English  ground,  or  trickled  from  the  antique 
urns  of  Italy. 

I  do  not  think  that  I  have  ever  cared  much  for  met- 
aphysics, or  to  read  much  in  that  way,  but  from  time 
to  time  I  have  done  something  of  it. 

Travels,  of  course,  I  have  read  as  part  of  the  great 
human  story,  and  autobiography  has  at  times  appeared 


CERTAIN  PREFERENCES  AND  EXPERIENCES.    235 

to  me  the  most  delightful  reading  in  the  world  ;  I  have 
a  taste  in  it  that  rejects  nothing,  though  I  have  never 
enjoyed  any  autobiographies  so  much  as  those  of  such 
Italians  as  have  reasoned  of  themselves. 

I  suppose  I  have  not  been  a  great  reader  of  the 
drama,  and  I  do  not  know  that  I  have  ever  greatly  rel- 
ished any  plays  but  those  of  Shakespeare  and  Goldoni, 
and  two  or  three  of  Beaumont  and,  Fletcher,  and  one 
or  so  of  Marlow's,  and  all  of  Ibsen's  and  Maeterlinck's. 
The  taste  for  the  old  English  dramatists  I  believe  I 
have  never  formed. 

Criticism,  ever  since  I  filled  myself  so  full  of  it  in 
my  boyhood,  I  have  not  cared  for,  and  often  I  have 
found  it  repulsive. 

I  have  a  fondness  for  books  of  popular  science,  per- 
haps because  they  too  are  part  of  the  human  story. 

I  have  read  somewhat  of  the  theology  of  the  Swe- 
denborgian  faith  I  was  brought  up  in,  but  I  have  not 
read  other  theological  works ;  and  I  do  not  apologize 
for  not  liking  any.  The  Bible  itself  was  not  much 
known  to  me  at  an  age  when  most  children  have  been 
obliged  to  read  it  several  times  over;  the  gospels  were 
indeed  familiar,  and  they  have  always  been  to  me  the 
supreme  human  story ;  but  the  rest  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment I  had  not  read  when  a  man  grown,  and  only 


236  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

passages  of  the  Old  Testament,  like  the  story  of  the 
Creation,  and  the  story  of  Joseph,  and  the  poems  of 
Job  and  Ecclesiastes,  with  occasional  Psalms.  I 
therefore  came  to  the  Scriptures  with  a  sense  at  once 
fresh  and  mature,  and  I  can  never  be  too  glad  that  I 
learned  to  see  them  under  the  vaster  horizon  and  in 
the  truer  perspectives  of  experience. 

Again  as  lights  on  the  human  story  I  have  liked  to 
read  such  books  of  medicine  as  have  fallen  in  my  way, 
and  I  seldom  take  up  a  medical  periodical  without 
reading  of  all  the  cases  it  describes,  and  in  fact  every 
article  in  it. 

But  I  did  not  mean  to  make  even  this  slight  depart- 
ure from  the  main  business  of  these  papers,  which  is 
to  confide  my  literary  passions  to  the  reader ;  he  prob- 
ably has  had  a  great  many  of  his  own.  I  think  I  may 
class  the  Ring  and  the  Book  among  them,  though  I 
have  never  been  otherwise  a  devotee  of  Browning. 
But  I  was  still  newly  home  from  Italy,  or  away  from 
home,  when  that  poem  appeared,  and  whether  or  not 
it  was  because  it  took  me  so  with  the  old  enchantment 
of  that  land,  I  gave  my  heart  promptly  to  it.  Of 
course,  there  are  terrible  longueurs  in  it,  and  you  do 
get  tired  of  the  same  story  told  over  and  over  from 
the  different  points  of  view,  and  yet  it  is  such  a  great 


CERTAIN  PREFERENCES  AND  EXPERIENCES.    237 

story,  and  unfolded  with  such  a  magnificent  breadth 
and  noble  fullness,  that  one  who  blames  it  lightly 
blames  himself  heavily.  There  are  certain  books  of  it 
—  Caponsacchi's  story,  Pompilia's  story,  and  Count 
Guido's  story  —  that  I  think  ought  to  rank  with  the 
greatest  poetry  ever  written,  and  that  have  a  direct, 
dramatic  expression  of  the  fact  and  character,  which  is 
without  rival.  There  is  a  noble  and  lofty  pathos  in 
the  close  of  Caponsacchi's  statement,  an  artless  and 
manly  break  from  his  self-control  throughout,  that 
seems  to  me  the  last  possible  effect  in  its  kind ;  and 
Pompilia's  story  holds  all  of  womanhood  in  it,  the 
purity,  the  passion,  the  tenderness,  the  helplessness. 
But  if  I  begin  to  praise  this  or  any  of  the  things  I 
have  liked,  I  do  not  know  when  I  should  stop.  Yes, 
as  I  think  it  over,  the  Ring  and  the  Book  appears  to 
me  one  of  the  great  few  poems  whose  splendor  can 
never  suffer  lasting  eclipse,  however  it  may  have  pres- 
ently fallen  into  abeyance.  If  it  had  impossibly  come 
down  to  us  from  some  elder  time,  or  had  not  been  so 
perfectly  modern  in  its  recognition  of  feeling  and  mo- 
tives ignored  by  the  less  conscious  poetry  of  the  past, 
it  would  be  ranked  where  it  belongs,  with  the  great 
epics. 

Of  other  modern  poets  I  have  read  some  things  of 


238  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

William  Morris,  like  the  Life  and  Death  of  Jason,  the 
Story  of  Gudrun,  and  the  Trial  of  Guinevere,  with  a 
pleasure  little  less  than  passionate,  and  I  have  equally 
liked  certain  pieces  of  Dante  Rossetti.  I  have  had  a 
high  joy  in  some  of  the  great  minor  poems  of  Emer- 
son, where  the  goddess  moves  over  Concord  meadows 
with  a  gait  that  is  Greek,  and  her  sandaled  tread  ex- 
presses a  high  scorn  of  the  india-rubber  boots  that  the 
American  muse  so  often  gets  about  in. 

The  Commemoration  Ode  of  Lowell  has  also  been 
a  source  from  which  I  drank  something  of  the  divine 
ecstasy  of  the  poet's  own  exalted  mood,  and  I  would 
set  this  level  with  the  Bigelow  Papers,  high  above  all 
his  other  work,  and  chief  of  the  things  this  age  of  our 
country  shall  be  remembered  by.  Holmes  I  always 
loved,  and  not  for  his  wit  alone,  which  is  so  obvious 
to  liking,  but  for  those  rarer  and  richer  strains  of  his 
in  which  he  shows  himself  the  lover  of  nature  and  the 
brother  of  men.  The  deep  spiritual  insight,  the  celes- 
tial music,  and  the  brooding  tenderness  of  Whittier 
have  always  taken  me  more  than  his  fierier  appeals 
and  his  civic  virtues,  though  I  do  not  underrate  the 
value  of  these  in  his  verse. 

My  acquaintance  with  these  modern  poets,  and  many 
I  do  not  name  because  they  are  so  many,  has  been 


CERTAIN  PREFERENCES  AND  EXPERIENCES.    239 

continuous  with  their  work,  and  my  pleasure  in  it  not 
inconstant  if  not  equal.  I  have  spoken  before  of 
Longfellow  as  one  of  my  first  passions,  and  I  have 
never  ceased  to  delight  in  him ;  but  some  of  the  very 
newest  and  youngest  of  our  poets  have  given  me  thrills 
of  happiness,  for  which  life  has  become  lastingly 
sweeter.  If  I  speak  of  a  poem  of  Stoddard's,  a  son- 
net of  Aldrich's,  a  ballad  of  Stedman's,  it  is  to  offer 
partial  payment  on  a  sum  in  which  I  must  always  re- 
main richly  their  debtor. 

Long  after  I  had  thought  never  to  read  it  —  in  fact 
when  I  was  net  mezzo  del  cammin  di  nostra  vita  —  I 
read  Milton's  Paradise  Lost,  and  found  in  it  a  splen- 
dor and  majestic  beauty  that  justified  to  me  the  fame 
it  wears,  and  eclipsed  the  worth  of  those  lesser  poems 
which  I  had  stupidly  and  ignorantly  accounted  his 
worthiest.  In  fact  it  was  one  of  the  literary  passions 
of  the  time  I  speak  of,  and  it  shared  my  devotion  for 
the  novels  of  Tourguenief  and  (shall  I  own  it  ?)  the 
romances  of  Chcrbuliez.  After  all,  it  is  best  to  be 
honest,  and  if  it  is  not  best,  it  is  at  least  easiest ;  it  in- 
volves the  fewest  embarrassing  consequences ;  and  if  I 
confess  the  spell  that  the  Revenge  of  Joseph  Noirel 
cast  upon  me  for  a  time,  perhaps  I  shall  be  able  to 
whisper  the  reader  behind  my  hand  that  I  have  never 


240  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

yet  read  the  ^neid  of  Virgil ;  the  Georgics,  yes ;  but 
the  JEneid,  no.  Some  time,  however,  I  expect  to  read 
it  and  to  like  it  immensely.  That  is  often  the  case 
with  things  that  I  have  held  aloof  from  indefinitely. 

One  fact  of  my  experience  which  the  reader  may 
find  interesting  is  that  when  I  am  writing  steadily  I 
have  little  relish  for  reading.  I  fancy  that  reading  is 
not  merely  a  pastime  when  it  is  apparently  the  merest 
pastime,  but  that  a  certain  measure  of  mind-stuff  is 
used  up  in  it,  and  that  if  you  are  using  up  all  the 
mind-stuff  you  have,  much  or  little,  in  some  other  way, 
you  do  not  read  because  you  have  not  the  mind-stuff 
for  it.  At  any  rate  it  is  in  this  sort  only  that  I  can 
account  for  my  failure  to  read  a  great  deal  during  four 
years  of  the  amplest  quiet  that  I  spent  in  the  country 
at  Belmont,  whither  we  removed  from  Cambridge.  I 
had  promised  myself  that  in  this  quiet,  now  that  I  had 
given  up  reviewing,  and  wrote  little  or  nothing  in  the 
magazine  but  my  stories,  I  should  again  read  purely 
for  the  pleasure  of  it,  as  I  had  in  the  early  days  before 
the  critical  purpose  had  qualified  it  with  a  bitter  alloy. 
But  I  found  that  not  being  forced  to  read  a  number 
of  books  each  month,  so  that  I  might  write  about 
them,  I  did  not  read  at  all,  comparatively  speaking. 
To  be  sure  I  dawdled  over  a  great  many  books  that  I 


CERTAIN  PREFERENCES  AND  EXPERIENCES.    241 

had  read  before,  and  a  number  of  memoirs  and  biog- 
raphies, but  I  had  no  intense  pleasure  from  reading  in 
that  time,  and  have  no  passions  to  record  of  it.  It 
may  have  been  a  period  when  no  new  thing  happened 
in  literature  freshly  to  stir  one's  interest ;  I  only  state 
the  fact  concerning  myself,  and  suggest  the  most  plau- 
sible theory  I  can  think  of. 

I  wish  also  to  note  another  incident,  which  may  or 
may  not  have  its  psychological  value.  An  important 
event  of  these  years  was  a  long  sickness  which  kept 
me  helpless  some  seven  or  eight  weeks,  when  I  was 
forced  to  read  in  order  to  pass  the  intolerable  time. 
But  in  this  misery  I  found  that  I  could  not  read  any- 
thing of  a  dramatic  cast,  whether  in  the  form  of  plays 
or  of  novels.  The  mere  sight  of  the  printed  page, 
broken  up  in  dialogue,  was  anguish.  Yet  it  was  not 
the  excitement  of  the  fiction  that  I  dreaded,  for  I  con- 
sumed great  numbers  of  narratives  of  travel,  and  was 
not  in  the  least  troubled  by  hairbreadth  escapes,  or 
shipwrecks,  or  perils  from  wild  beasts  or  deadly  ser- 
pents; it  was  the  dramatic  effect  contrived  by  the 
playwright  or  novelist,  and  worked  up  to  in  the  speech 
of  his  characters  that  I  could  not  bear.  I  found  a  like 
impossible  stress  from  the  Sunday  newspaper  which  a 
mistaken  friend  sent  in  to  me,  and  which  with  its 

Q 


242  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

scare-headings,    and  artfully-wrought  sensations,  had 
the  effect  of  fiction,  as  in  fact  it  largely  was. 

At  the  end  of  four  years  we  went  abroad  again,  and 
travel  took  away  the  appetite  for  reading  as  completely 
as  writing  did.  I  recall  nothing  read  in  that  year  in 
Europe  which  moved  me,  and  I  think  I  read  very  little, 
except  the  local  histories  of  the  Tuscan  cities  which  I 
afterward  wrote  of. 


XXXIV, 

VALERA,  VALD&S,  GALDtfS,  VERGA.  ZOLA, 
TROLLOPE,  HARDY. 

IN  fact,  it  was  not  till  I  returned,  and  took  up  life 
again  in  Boston,  in  the  old  atmosphere  of  work,  that 
I  turned  once  more  to  books.  Even  then  I  had  to 
wait  for  the  time  when  I  undertook  a  critical  depart* 
ment  in  one  of  the  magazines,  before  I  felt  the  rise  of 
the  old  enthusiasm  for  an  author.  That  is  to  say,  I 
had  to  begin  reading  for  business  again  before  I  began 
reading  for  pleasure.  The  first  great  pleasure  which  I 
had  upon  these  terms  was  in  the  book  of  a  contempo- 
rary  Spanish  author,  the  Pepita  Ximenez  of  Juan 
Valera.  It  is  not  a  book  that  I  could  commend  with- 
out reserve  to  the  reading  of  young  people,  but  after 
frankly  confessing  this  I  must  say  that  it  is,  even  by 
our  standard,  a  far  more  blameless  book  than  half  the 
fiction  I  know,  and  beside  most  stage  plays  it  is  ex- 
emplary. What  took  rne  in  it  was  the  charm  of  an 


244  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

exquisite  art  in  a  direction  where  I  had  never  thought 
to  turn  again,  and  a  fresh  and  joyous  sympathy  with 
human  nature  in  an  absolutely  novel  phase.  It  is  a 
daring  story  for  a  Catholic  to  have  written,  but  one 
gets  used  to  such  daring  in  the  modern  Spanish 
authors. 

The  next  Spanish  book  that  fell  into  my  hands  was 
a  still  more  striking  instance  of  their  boldness  in  deal- 
ing with  the  visible  church.  This  was  the  Marta  y 
Maria  of  Armando  Palacio  Valdes,  a  novelist  who  de- 
lights me  beyond  words  by  his  friendly  and  abundant 
humor,  his  feeling  for  character,  and  his  subtle  in- 
sight. I  like  every  one  of  his  books  that  I  have  read, 
and  I  believe  that  I  have  read  nearly  every  one  that  he 
has  written.  As  I  mention  Riverito,  Maximina,  Un 
Idilio  de  un  Inferno,  La  Hermana  de  San  Sulpizio,  El 
Cuarto  Poder,  Espuma,  the  mere  names  conjure  up  the 
scenes  and  events  that  have  moved  me  to  tears  and 
laughter,  and  filled  me  with  a  vivid  sense  of  the  life 
portrayed  in  them.  I  think  the  Marta  y  Maria  one  of 
the  most  truthful  and  profound  fictions  I  have  read, 
and  Maximina  one  of  the  most  pathetic,  and  La  Her- 
mana de  San  Sulpizio  one  of  the  most  amusing.  For- 
tunately, these  books  of  Yaldes's  have  nearly  all  been 
translated,  and  the  reader  may  test  the  matter  in 


VALERA    AND    OTHERS.  245 

English,  though  it  necessarily  halts  somewhat  behind 
the  Spanish. 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  Spaniards  themselves 
rank  Valdes  with  Galdos  or  not,  and  I  have  no  wish 
to  decide  upon  their  relative  merits.  They  are  both 
present  passions  of  mine,  and  I  may  say  of  the  Dona 
Perfecta  of  Galdos  that  no  book,  if  I  except  those  of 
the  greatest  Russians,  has  given  me  a  keener  and 
deeper  impression ;  it  is  infinitely  pathetic,  and  is  full 
of  humor,  which  if  more  caustic  than  that  of  Valdes 
is  not  less  delicious.  But  I  like  all  the  books  of  Gal- 
dos that  I  have  read,  and  though  he  seems  to  have 
worked  more  tardily  out  of  his  romanticism  than  Val- 
des, since  he  has  worked  finally  into  such  realism  as 
that  of  Leon  Roch,  his  greatness  leaves  nothing  to  be 
desired. 

I  have  read  one  of  the  books  of  Emilia  Pardo-Ba- 
zan,  called  Morrina,  which  must  rank  her  with  the 
great  realists  of  her  country  and  age ;  she,  too,  has 
that  humor  of  her  race,  which  brings  us  nearer  the 
Spanish  than  any  other  non-Anglo-Saxon  people. 

A  contemporary  Italian,  whom  I  like  hardly  less 
than  these  noble  Spaniards,  is  Giovanni  Verga,  who 
wrote  I  Malavoglia,  or,  as  we  call  it  in  English,  The 
House  by  the  Medlar  Tree :  a  story  of  infinite  beauty, 


246  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

tenderness  and  truth.  As  I  have  said  before,  I  think 
with  Zola  that  Giacometti,  the  Italian  author  of  La 
Morte  Civile,  has  written  almost  the  greatest  play,  all 
round,  of  modern  times. 

But  what  shall  I  say  of  Zola  himself,  and  my  admi- 
ration of  his  epic  greatness  ?  About  his  material  there 
is  no  disputing  among  people  of  our  Puritanic  tradi- 
tion. It  is  simply  abhorrent,  but  when  you  have  once 
granted  him  his  material  for  his  own  use,  it  is  idle  and 
foolish  to  deny  his  power.  Every  literary  theory  of 
mine  was  contrary  to  him  when  I  took  up  L'Assom- 
moir,  though  unconsciously  I  had  always  been  as  much 
of  a  realist  as  I  could,  but  the  book  possessed  me  with 
the  same  fascination  that  I  felt  the  other  day  in  read- 
ing his  L' Argent.  The  critics  know  now  that  Zola  is 
not  the  realist  he  used  to  fancy  himself,  and  he  is  full 
of  the  best  qualities  of  the  romanticism  he  has  hated 
so  much ;  but  for  what  he  is,  there  is  but  one  novelist 
of  our  time,  or  of  any,  that  outmasters  him,  and  that 
is  Tolstoy.  For  my  own  part,  I  think  that  the  books 
of  Zola  are  not  immoral,  but  they  are  indecent  through 
the  facts  that  they  nakedly  represent ;  they  are  infi- 
nitely more  moral  than  the  books  of  any  other  French 
novelist.  This  may  not  be  saying  a  great  deal,  but  it 
is  saying  the  truth,  and  I  do  not  mind  owning  that  he 


VALERA    AND    OTHERS.  247 

has  been  one  of  my  great  literary  passions,  almost  as 
great  as  Flaubert,  and  greater  than  Daudet  or  Mau- 
passant, though  I  have  profoundly  appreciated  the 
exquisite  artistry  of  both  these.  NQ  French  writer, 
however,  has  moved  me  so  much  as  the  Spanish,  for 
the  French  are  wanting  in  the  humor  which  endears 
these,  and  is  the  quintessence  of  their  charm. 

You  cannot  be  at  perfect  ease  with  a  friend  who 
does  not  joke,  and  I  suppose  this  is  what  deprived 
me  of  a  final  satisfaction  in  the  company  of  An- 
thony Trollope,  who  jokes  heavily  or  not  at  all,  and 
whom  I  should  otherwise  make  bold  to  declare  the 
greatest  of  English  novelists ;  as  it  is,  I  must  put  be- 
fore him  Jane  Austen,  whose  books,  late  in  life,  have 
been  a  youthful  rapture  with  me.  Even  without  much 
humor  Trollope's  books  have  been  a  vast  pleasure  to 
me  through  their  simple  truthfulness.  Perhaps  if  they 
were  more  humorous  they  would  not  be  so  true  to  the 
British  life  and  character  present  in  them  in  the  whole 
length  and  breadth  of  its  expansive  commonplaceness. 
It  is  their  serious  fidelity  which  gives  them  a  value 
unique  in  literature,  and  which  if  it  were  carefully  an- 
alyzed would  afford  a  principle  of  the  same  quality  in 
an  author  who  was  undoubtedly  one  of  the  finest  of 
artists  as  well  as  the  most  Philistine  of  men. 


248  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

I  came  rather  late,  but  I  came  with  all  the  ardor  of 
what  seems  my  perennial  literary  youth,  to  the  love  of 
Thomas  Hardy,  whom  I  first  knew  in  his  story  A  Pair 
of  Blue  Eyes.  As  usual,  after  I  had  read  this  book 
and  felt  the  new  charm  in  it,  I  wished  to  read  the 
books  of  no  other  author,  and  to  read  his  books  over 
and  over.  I  could  not  get  enough  of  them,  though 
with  a  characteristic  perversity  or  fatality  I  have  not 
yet  read  his  Tess.  I  love  even  the  faults  of  Hardy ;  I 
will  let  him  play  me  any  trick  he  chooses  (and  he  is 
not  above  playing  tricks,  when  he  seems  to  get  tired 
of  his  story  or  perplexed  with  it),  if  only  he  will  go 
on  making  his  peasants  talk,  and  his  rather  uncertain 
ladies  get  in  and  out  of  love,  and  serve  themselves  of 
every  chance  that  fortune  offers  them  of  having  their 
own  way.  We  shrink  from  the  unmorality  of  the 
Latin  races,  but  Hardy  has  divined  in  the  heart  of  our 
own  race  a  lingering  heathenism,  which,  if  not  Greek, 
has  certainly  been  no  more  baptized  than  the  neo-hel- 
lenism  of  the  Parisians.  His  heroines  especially  ex- 
emplify it,  and  I  should  be  safe  in  saying  that  his 
Ethelbertas,  his  Eustacias,  his  Elfridas,  his  Bathshe- 
bas,  his  Fancies,  are  wholly  pagan.  I  should  not  dare 
to  ask  how  much  of  their  charm  came  from  that  fact ; 
and  the  author  does  not  fail  to  show  you  how  much 


VALERA    AND    OTHERS.  249 

harm,  so  that  it  is  not  on  my  conscience.  His  people 
live  very  close  to  the  heart  of  nature,  and  no  one,  un- 
less it  is  Tourguenief,  gives  you  a  richer  and  sweeter 
sense  of  her  unity  with  human  nature.  Hardy  is  a 
great  poet  as  well  as  a  great  humorist,  and  if  he  were 
not  a  great  artist  also  his  humor  would  be  enough  to 
make  him  dear  to  me. 


XXXV. 

TOLSTOY. 

I  COME  now,  though  not  quite  in  the  order  of  time, 
to  the  noblest  of  all  these  enthusiasms,  namely,  my 
devotion  for  the  writings  of  Lyof  Tolstoy.  I  should 
wish  to  speak  of  him  with  his  own  incomparable 
truth,  yet  I  do  not  know  how  to  give  a  notion  of  his 
influence  without  the  effect  of  exaggeration.  As  much 
as  one  merely  human  being  can  help  another  I  believe 
that  he  has  helped  me ;  he  has  not  influenced  me  in 
aesthetics  only,  but  in  ethics,  too,  so  that  I  can  never 
again  see  life  in  the  way  I  saw  it  before  I  knew  him. 
Tolstoy  awakens  in  his  reader  the  will  to  be  a  man ; 
not  effectively,  not  spectacularly,  but  simply,  really. 
He  leads  you  back  to  the  only  true  ideal,  away  from 
that  false  standard  of  the  gentleman,  to  the  Man  who 
sought  not  to  be  distinguished  from  other  men,  but 
identified  with  them,  to  that  Presence  in  which  the 


TOLSTOY.  251 

finest  gentleman  shows  his  alloy  of  vanity,  and  the 
greatest  genius  shrinks  to  the  measure  of  his  miserable 
egotism.  I  learned  from  Tolstoy  to  try  character  and 
motive  by  no  other  test,  and  though  I  am  perpetually 
false  to  that  sublime  ideal  myself,  still  the  ideal  re- 
mains with  me,  to  make  me  ashamed  that  I  am  not 
true  to  it.  Tolstoy  gave  me  heart  to  hope  that  the 
world  may  yet  be  made  over  in  the  image  of  Him  who 
died  for  it,  when  all  Caesar's  things  shall  be  finally 
rendered  unto  Csesar,  and  men  shall  come  into  their 
own,  into  the  right  to  labor  and  the  right  to  enjoy  the 
fruits  of  their  labor,  each  one  master  of  himself  and 
servant  to  every  other.  He  taught  me  to  see  life  not 
as  a  chase  of  a  forever  impossible  personal  happiness, 
but  as  a  field  for  endeavor  toward  the  happiness  of  the 
whole  human  family ;  and  I  can  never  lose  this  vision, 
however  I  close  my  eyes,  and  strive  to  see  my  own 
interest  as  the  highest  good.  He  gave  me  new  crite- 
rions,  new  principles,  which,  after  all,  were  those  that 
are  taught  us  in  our  earliest  childhood,  before  we  have 
come  to  the  evil  wisdom  of  the  world.  As  I  read  his 
different  ethical  books,  What  to  Do,  My  Confession, 
and  My  Religion,  I  recognized  their  truth  with  a  rap- 
ture such  as  I  have  known  in  no  other  reading,  and  I 
rendered  them  my  allegiance,  heart  and  soul,  with 


252  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

whatever  sickness  of  the  one  and  despair  of  the  other. 
They  have  it  yet,  and  I  believe  they  will  have  it  while 
I  live.  It  is  with  inexpressible  astonishment  that  I 
hear  them  attainted  of  pessimism,  as  if  the  teaching 
of  a  man  whose  ideal  was  simple  goodness  must  mean 
the  prevalence  of  evil.  The  way  he  showed  me  seemed 
indeed  impossible  to  my  will,  but  to  my  conscience  it 
was  and  is  the  only  possible  way.  If  there  is  any 
point  on  which  he  has  not  convinced  my  reason  it  is 
that  of  our  ability  to  walk  this  narrow  way  alone. 
Even  there  he  is  logical,  but  as  Zola  subtly  distin- 
guishes in  speaking  of  Tolstoy's  essay  on  Money,  he 
is  not  reasonable.  Solitude  enfeebles  and  palsies,  and 
it  is  as  comrades  and  brothers  that  men  must  save  the 
world  from  itself,  rather  than  themselves  from  the 
world.  It  was  so  the  earliest  Christians,  who  had  all 
things  common,  understood  the  life  of  Christ,  and  I 
believe  that  the  latest  will  understand  it  so. 

I  have  spoken  first  of  the  ethical  works  of  Tolstoy, 
because  they  are  of  the  first  importance  to  me,  but  I 
think  that  his  sesthetica!  works  are  as  perfect.  To  my 
thinking  they  transcend  in  truth,  which  is  the  highest 
beauty,  all  other  works  of  fiction  that  have  been 
written,  and  I  believe  that  they  do  this  because  they 
obey  the  law  of  the  author's  own  life.  His  conscience 


TOLSTOY.  253 

is  one  ethically  and  one  aesthetically ;  with  his  will  to 
be  true  to  himself  he  cannot  be  false  to  his  knowledge 
of  others.  I  thought  the  last  word  in  literary  art  had 
been  said  to  me  by  the  novels  of  Tourguenief,  but  it 
seemed  like  the  first,  merely,  when  I  began  to  ac- 
quaint myself  with  the  simpler  method  of  Tolstoy.  I 
came  to  it  by  accident,  and  without  any  manner  of 
preoccupation  in  The  Cossacks,  one  of  his  early 
books,  which  had  been  on  my  shelves  unread  for  five 
or  six  years.  I  did  not  know  even  Tolstoy's  name 
when  I  opened  it,  and  it  was  with  a  kind  of  amaze 
that  I  read  it,  and  felt  word  by  word,  and  line  by  line, 
the  truth  of  a  new  art  in  it. 

I  do  not  know  how  it  is  that  the  great  Russians 
have  the  secret  of  simplicity.  Some  say  it  is  because 
they  have  not  a  long  literary  past  and  are  not  conven- 
tionalized by  the  usage  of  many  generations  of  other 
writers,  but  this  will  hardly  account  for  the  brotherly 
directness  of  their  dealing  with  human  nature;  the 
absence  of  experience  elsewhere  characterizes  the  art- 
ist with  crudeness,  and  simplicity  is  the  last  effect  of 
knowledge.  Tolstoy  is,  of  course,  the  first  of  them  in 
this  supreme  grace.  He  has  not  only  Tourguenief's 
transparency  of  style,  unclouded  by  any  mist  of  the 
personality  which  we  mistakenly  value  in  style,  and 


254  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

which  ought  no  more  to  be  there  than  the  artist's  per- 
sonality should  be  in  a  portrait ;  but  he  has  a  method 
which  not  only  seems  without  artifice,  but  is  so.  I 
can  get  at  the  manner  of  most  writers,  and  tell  what 
it  is,  but  I  should  be  baffled  to  tell  what  Tolstoy's 
manner  is ;  perhaps  he  has  no  manner.  This  appears 
to  me  true  of  his  novels,  which,  with  their  vast  variety 
of  character  and  incident,  are  alike  in  their  single  en- 
deavor to  get  the  persons  living  before  you,  both  in 
their  action  and  in  the  peculiarly  dramatic  interpreta- 
tion of  their  emotion  and  cogitation.  There  are  plenty 
of  novelists  to  tell  you  that  their  characters  felt  and 
thought  so  and  so,  but  you  have  to  take  it  on  trust ; 
Tolstoy  alone  makes  you  know  how  and  why  it  was  so 
with  them  and  not  otherwise.  If  there  is  anything  in 
him  which  can  be  copied  or  burlesqued  it  is  this  abil- 
ity of  his  to  show  men  inwardly  as  well  as  outwardly ; 
it  is  the  only  trait  of  his  which  I  can  put  my  hand  on. 
After  the  Cossacks  1  read  Anna  Karenina  with  a 
deepening  sense  of  the  author's  unrivaled  greatness.  I 
thought  that  I  saw  through  his  eyes  a  human  affair  of 
that  most  sorrowful  sort  as  it  must  appear  to  the  In- 
finite Compassion ;  the  book  is  a  sort  of  revelation  of 
human  nature  in  circumstances  that  have  been  so  per- 
petually lied  about  that  we  have  almost  lost  the  faculty 


TOLSTOY.  255 

of  perceiving  the  truth  concerning  an  illicit  love. 
When  you  have  once  read  Anna  Karenina  you  know 
how  fatally  miserable  and  essentially  unhappy  such  a 
love  must  be.  But  the  character  of  Karenin  himself 
is  quite  as  important  as  the  intrigue  of  Anna  and 
Vronsky.  It  is  wonderful  how  such  a  man,  cold, 
Philistine  and  even  mean  in  certain  ways,  towers  into 
a  sublimity  unknown  (to  me,  at  least,)  in  fiction  when 
he  forgives,  and  yet  knows  that  he  cannot  forgive  with 
dignity.  There  is  something  crucial,  and  something 
triumphant,  not  beyond  the  power,  but  hitherto  be- 
yond the  imagination  of  men  in  this  effect,  which  is 
not  solicited,  not  forced,  not  in  the  least  romantic,  but 
comes  naturally,  almost  inevitably  from  the  make  of 
man. 

The  vast  prospects,  the  far-reaching  perspectives  of 
War  and  Peace  made  it  as  great  a  surprise  for  me  in 
the  historical  novel  as  Anna  Karenina  had  been  in  the 
study  of  contemporary  life ;  and  its  people  and  inter- 
ests did  not  seem  more  remote,  since  they  are  of  a 
civilization  always  as  strange  and  of  a  humanity  always 
as  known. 

I  read  some  shorter  stories  of  Tolstoy's  before  I 
came  to  this  greatest  work  of  his :  I  read  Scenes  of 
the  Siege  of  Sebastopol,  which  is  so  much  of  the  same 


256  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

quality  as  War  and  P.eace;  and  I  read  Policoushka 
and  most  of  his  short  stories  with  a  sense  of  my  unity 
with  their  people  such  as  I  had  never  felt  with  the 
people  of  other  fiction. 

His  didactic  stories,  like  all  stories  of  the  sort,  dwin- 
dle into  allegories;  perhaps  they  do  their  work  the 
better  for  this,  with  the  simple  intelligences  they  ad- 
dress ;  but  I  think  that  where  Tolstoy  becomes  impa- 
tient of  his  office  of  artist,  and  prefers  to  be  directly  a 
teacher,  he  robs  himself  of  more  than  half  his  strength 
with  those  he  can  move  only  through  the  realization 
of  themselves  in  others.  The  simple  pathos,  and  the 
apparent  indirectness  of  such  a  tale  as  that  of  Poli- 
coushka, the  peasant  conscript,  is  of  vastly  more  value 
to  the  world  at  large  than  all  his  parables ;  and  The 
Death  of  Ivan  Ilyitch,  the  Philistine  worldling,  will 
turn  the  hearts  of  many  more  from  the  love  of  the 
world  than  such  pale  fables  of  the  early  Christian  life 
as  Work  while  ye  have  the  Light.  A  man's  gifts  are 
not  given  him  for  nothing,  and  the  man  who  has  the 
great  gift  of  dramatic  fiction  has  no  right  to  cast  it 
away  or  to  let  it  rust  out  in  disuse. 

Terrible  as  the  Kreutzer  Sonata  was,  it  had  a  moral 
effect  dramatically  which  it  lost  altogether  when  the 
author  descended  to  exegesis,  and  applied  to  marriage 


TOLSTOY.  257 

the  lesson  of  one  evil  marriage.  In  fine,  Tolstoy  is 
certainly  not  to  be  held  up  as  infallible.  He  is  very 
distinctly  fallible,  but  I  think  his  life  is  not  less  in- 
structive because  in  certain  things  it  seems  a  failure. 
There  was  but  one  life  ever  lived  upon  the  earth  which 
was  without  failure,  and  that  was  Christ's,  whose  err- 
ing and  stumbling  follower  Tolstoy  is.  There  is  no 
other  example,  no  other  ideal,  and  the  chief  use  of 
Tolstoy  is  to  enforce  this  fact  in  our  age,  after  nineteen 
centuries  of  hopeless  endeavor  to  substitute  ceremony 
for  character, -and  the  creed  for  the  life.  I  recognize 
the  truth  of  this  without  pretending  to  have  been 
changed  in  anything  but  my  point  of  view  of  it.  What 
I  feel  sure  is  that  I  can  never  look  at  life  in  the  mean 
and  sordid  way  that  I  did  before  I  read  Tolstoy. 

Artistically,  he  has  shown  me  a  greatness  that  he 
can  never  teach  me.  I  am  long  past  the  age  when  I 
could  wish  to-form  myself  upon  another  writer,  and  I 
do  not  think  I  could  now  insensibly  take  on  the  like- 
ness of  another;  but  his  work  has  been  a  revelation 
and  a  delight  to  me,  such  as  I  am  sure  I  can  never 
know  again.  I  do  not  believe  that  in  the  whole 
course  of  my  reading,  and  not  even  in  the  early  mo- 
ment of  my  literary  enthusiasms,  I  have  known  such 
utter  satisfaction  in  any  writer,  and  this  supreme  joy 


258  MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS. 

has  come  to  me  at  a  time  of  life  when  new  friendships, 
not  to  say  new  passions,  are  rare  and  reluctant.  It  is 
as  if  the  best  wine  at  this  high  feast  where  I  have  sat 
so  long  had  been  kept  for  the  last,  and  I  need  not 
deny  a  miracle  in  it  in  order  to  attest  my  skill  in  judg- 
ing vintages.  In  fact,  I  prefer  to  believe  that  my  life 
has  been  full  of  miracles,  and  that  the  good  has  always 
come  to  me  at  the  right  time,  so  that  I  could  profit 
most  by  it.  I  believe  if  I  had  not  turned  the  corner 
of  my  fiftieth  year,  when  I  first  knew  Tolstoy,  I  should 
not  have  been  able  to  know  him  as  fully  as  I  did.  He 
has  been  to  me  that  final  consciousness,  which  he 
speaks  of  so  wisely  in  his  essay  on  Life.  I  came  in 
it  to  the  knowledge  of  myself  in  ways  I  had  not 
dreamt  of  before,  and  began  at  least  to  discern  my  re- 
lations to  the  race,  without  which  we  are  each  nothing. 
The  supreme  art  in  literature  had  its  highest  effect  in 
making  me  set  art  forever  below  humanity,  and  it  is 
with  the  wish  to  offer  the  greatest  homage  to  his  heart 
and  mind,  which  any  man  can  pay  another,  that  I  close 
this  record  with  the  name  of  Lyof  Tolstoy. 


INDEX. 


ADDISON,  132 
Aldrich,  239 
Anacreon,  90 
Auerbach,  233 
Austen,  Jane,  247 

Bible.  The,  235 

Bjornson,  Bjornstjerne,  225,  226, 

227,  232 

Blackstone,  125 
Bloomfield's  Farmer  Boy,  47 
Browning,  156, 189,  235,  236 
Bulwer,  8, 161 
Burns,  6 
Byron,  6,  60, 66 

Cervantes,  10,  19,  20,  23,  25,  28, 

31,  43,  68,  77,  108.  141 
Chaucer,  108, 109,  110,  111,  113 
Conde,  141 
Cowper,  6 
Curtis,. Geo.  Wm.,  145,  146, 149 


Dante,  160,  200,  201,  204 
Daudet,  247 
D'Azeglio,  212,  213 
De  Forest,  J.  W.,  223 
De  Quincey,  106, 163,  174, 176, 177 
Dickens,  85,  87,  92,  93,  94,  96,  97 
100, 101, 103,  218 

Eliot,  George,  185, 193,  217 
Emerson,  179,  238 
Erckmann-Chatrian,  225 

Galdos,  245 

Gesta  Romanorum,  14 

Giacometti.  207,  246 

Goethe,  160, 174, 178, 188 

Goldoni,  208, 210, 215 

Goldsmith,  10,  11,  12,  14,  15,  16, 

17, 19,  28,  33,  43,  48, 117 
Gotthelf,  Jeremias,  226 
Guarini,  216,  217 

Hardy,  Thomas,  248 


260 


Hawthorne,  186,  187 

Hazlitt,  120 

Heine,  167,  168,  170,  172,  173,  177, 

188,  189,  190 

Holmes,  O.  W.,  106,  233 
Hunt,  Leigh,  120 


Miigge,  Theodore,  his  Afraja» 
181 

Nepos,  Cornelius,  90 
Ossian,  66,  67,  68 


Ibsen,  227,  235 

Irving,  8, 19,  28,  29,  32,  70, 117 

James,  Henry,  224 
Jane  Eyre,  35 

Kingsley,  218 

Lamb,  120 

Longfellow,  38, 106, 147, 155 
Lowell,  J.  R.,57, 107, 108, 172, 179, 
239 

Macaulay,  113, 115, 116, 117, 119 

Maeterlinck,  235 

Manzoni,  212,  213 

Marryat,  46 

Marvel,  Ik,  (Donald  G.  Mitchell) 

83,  84,  85,  87 
Maupassant,  247 
Mendoza,  Hurtado  de,  his  Laza- 

rillo  de  Tormes,  142, 143, 144 
Milton,  239 
Moliere,  215 
Moore,  6 
Moratin,  141 
Morris,  William,  238 


Fardo-Bazan,  245 

Paul  Ferroll,  Author  of,  218,  220, 

221 

Piatt,  John  J.,  58, 191 
Poe,  E.  A.,  8, 18, 120 
Pope,  48,  49,  50,  52,  65 


Reade,  Charles,  193,  194, 196 
Reviews,  four  great  English,  121 

122, 127 
Rossetti,  Dante,  238 

Schlegel,  his  Dramatic  Litera- 
ture, 148 

Scott,  6, 40,  41 

Shakespeare,  7,  69,  71,  72,  73,  74, 
76,  77,  78,  79,  81,  82,  85,  99. 

Smith,  Alexander,  153 

Spectator,  The,  132 

Stedman,  239 

Steele,  132 

Sterne,  172 

Stoddard,  239 

Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin,  63,  64 

Sweden  borg,  235 


INDEX.  261 

Swift,  132  Valdes,  244,  245 

Valera,  243 

Tasso,  216, 217  Verga,  245 

Tennyson,  93,  149,  153,  155,  157,  Virgil,  6,  240 

159, 162,  163,  177, 189,  192 

Thackeray,  30,  129,  130,  131,  132,  Whitman,  Walt,  68 

133, 134,  135,  136,  137, 138,  218.  Whittier,  106,  238 

Thomson's   Seasons,   5,  47  ;  his  Wordsworth,  106, 107 

Castle  of  Indolence,  55,  56. 

Tolstoy,  250, 251,  252, 253,  254,  256,  Zola,  207,  246 

257,  258.  Zschokke,  163 
Tourguenief,229,  230,231,  232,249 
Trollope,  218,  247 


THE    END. 


BY  GEORGE  PIT  MAURIER 


TRILBY.  A  Novel,  Illustrated  by  the  Author. 
Post  8vo,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  $1  75 ;  Three- 
quarter  Calf,  $3  50  ;  Three-quarter  Crushed  Le- 
vant, $4  50. 

Certainly,  if  it  were  not  for  its  predecessor,  we  should 
assign  to  "Trilby"  a  place  in  fiction  absolutely  companion- 
less.  ...  It  is  one  of  the  most  unconventional  and  charm- 
ing of  novels. — Saturday  Review,  London. 

It  is  a  charming  story  told  with  exquisite  grace  and  ten- 
derness.— N.  Y.  Tribune. 

Mr.  Du  Maurier  has  written  his  tale  with  such  original- 
ity, unconventional! ty,  and  eloquence,  such  rollicking  humor 
and  tender  pathos,  and  delightful  play  of  every  lively  fancy, 
all  running  so  briskly  in  exquisite  English  and  with  such  vivid 
dramatic  picturing,  that  it  is  only  comparable  ...  to  the 
freshness  and  beauty  of  a  spring  morning  at  the  end  of  a 
dragging  winter.  ...  It  is  a  thoroughly  unique  story. — N.  Y. 
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Edited  and  Illustrated  by  GEORGE  DU  MAURIER. 
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said,  inevitable.  One  or  two  more  such  books,  and  the  fame 
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FROM  THE  BOOKS    OF   LAURENCE   HUTTON. 
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WORTH    HlGGINSON. 

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L  Q  1979  REC'L 
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PN511.H65 


3  2106  00165  2848 


